The Adoption of Cybersecurity: An Analysis of Maldivian Internet Users’ Behaviour Using the Health Belief Model
Ahmed Naufal Abdul Hadee · Environmental Science Pollution Research and Management · 2022
ybersecurity has been one of the most pressing issues of our time yet there is a shortage of research in this domain. Research indicates that this is an evolving field that needs maturity and the human aspects of cybersecurity is one of the most important aspects of the domain as many authors have identified the human factor to be among the weakest link in this domain. The Maldives is a developing country that has a high internet penetration rate, however, there lack research that focuses on cybersecurity, especially understanding internet users’ cybersecurity behaviour. This research is one of the first to focus on the human aspect of cybersecurity within the Maldivian context. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design has been used to collect 206 responses using a systematic random sampling technique. The health belief model has been used to test 26 hypothesize relationships to understand the adoption of cybersecurity of individual internet users of the Maldives. A multiple hierarchical regression analysis has been conducted using IBM’s SPSS version 26 to test the relationships and the results show that internet users’ perceived severity of cyber-threats, their cybersecurity self-efficacy and their prior experience of cyber-threats, are strong indicators of their adoption of cybersecurity behaviour. Hence this study has provided an original contribution to the body of knowledge by targeting internet users of the Maldives to explore their cybersecurity behaviour utilizing HBM.