Response and Cultural Biases in Information Security Policy Compliance Research

Abstract

This contribution tries to shed light on whether current information security policy compliance research is affected by response (such as social desirability) or cultural biases. Based upon the hypothesis that response biases may be subject to information processing of the questionnaire item by the respondent, a classification of questionnaire items of 17 surveys is provided. Furthermore, the Individualism and Power Distance indices are gathered for the survey samples. Correlation analysis reveals that the Power Distance index correlates negatively, while Individualism correlates positively with the mean self-reported policy compliance. These findings support previous findings on the role of Power Distance and contradict the influence of response and social desirability biases on self-reported information security policy compliance.