How Could I Fall for That? Exploring Phishing Victimization with the Heuristic-Systematic Model

To the extent that phishing has become a serious threat to information security, there has been rather limited theory-grounded research on this burgeoning phenomenon. In this paper, we propose a study on victimization by phishing based on the Heuristic-Systematic Model of information processing. We argue that the Heuristic-Systematic Model offers an ideal theoretical framework for investigating the psychological mechanism underlying the effectiveness of phishing attacks, and present a preliminary research model based on the theory.