An empirical study of a behavioral decision model with moderated effects for long-range security initiatives

摘要

Organizations are squeezing their overhead budgets (where security initiatives fall) and are focusing more on revenue generation given current economic climates. Thus in both governmental sectors and in commercial settings, there are reasons to believe that strategic security initiatives are being sacrificed, and those that survive must be compelling to decision makers who may be biased toward one choice or another. To assist decision makers with difficult choices, it is critical to understand how biases affect long-range security initiative decisions. Although biases and behavioral decision theory (BDT) have been extensively researched in various contexts, we contribute to the body of security literature by filling a gap in relation to how biases defined in BDT influence security initiatives over the long-run. We conducted a longitudinal empirical investigation using a BDT model into how biases may affect long-range security initiative decision making, examining an important moderated interaction among the factors. Risk tolerance was shown to interact with overconfidence, anchoring adjustment, and utility such that these biases were amplified. This article represents a phase-3 in a four-phased study.