The Role of National Culture in Shaping Information Security and Privacy Behaviors

Security threats to information systems and online privacy pose one of the biggest challenges that individuals, organizations, and governments face today. However, while the threats are universal, each society places different values on, and individuals in each society exhibit different attitudes and behaviors towards, information security and privacy. Cultural differences can therefore interfere with and pose challenges to the successful design and implementation of strategies and interventions for mitigating these threats in the current era of globalization. Cross-cultural differences have been studied extensively in various fields, and cultural variance has been shown to explain differences in phenomena related to information security and privacy. However, the examination of cross-cultural issues in this field is still in its infancy, and a broad research agenda remains unexplored. This chapter reviews the prominent variables of information security and privacy examined from a cross-cultural perspective, discusses how cultural differences were interpreted, summarizes findings of major empirical research, and identifies major theoretical and methodological shortcomings in the current information security and privacy literature. Suggestions for future research are also provided.