| Abstract: |
Psychological and sociological factors constrain economic decision-making in
many contexts including the online world. Behavioural economics and economic
psychology emphasise that people will make mistakes in processing information
and in planning for the future; these mistakes will also distort learning
processes. Emotions and visceral factors will play a key role - not only
aecting people's actions but also distorting the interactions between
information, learning and choices. This will have wide-ranging implications
for online behavior and information security management, making people more
vulnerable to security/privacy abuses including hacking, spam attacks,
phishing, identity theft and online financial exploitation. These
vulnerabilities raise crucial policy questions - recently made more pressing
in the light of recent phone-hacking scandals in the UK. This paper outlines
some of the behavioural factors affecting people's online behaviour and
analyses real-world reactions to online fraud using evidence from the British
Crime Survey 2009-10. |