Abstract:  Individual users immerse themselves in experiencing mobile device and services but neglect the protection of personal information, which lead to information security issues such as privacy leakage. This paper integrates protection motivation theory and anticipated regret theory as the theory lenses to develop a research model to explore cognitive- and emotional-focused elements of driving personal information security protection motivation. 240 valid survey samples were collected and PLS-based structural equation modeling was adopted to test the research model and hypotheses. The findings indicate that privacy concern predicts positively protection motivation, and fear partial mediates the relationship between privacy concern and protection motivation while the significant path between perceived avoidability and protection motivation is completely mediated by anticipated regret.

Key words:  information security behavior, privacy, protection motivation, anticipated regret