To click or not to click the link: the factors influencing internet banking users’ intention in responding to phishing emails

Despite internet banking’s popularity, there is a rise in phishing attacks related to online banking transactions. Phishing attacks involved the process of sending out electronic mails impersonating the valid banking institutions to their customers and demanding confidential data such as credential and transaction authorisation code. The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model of individual and technological factors influencing Malaysian internet banking users’ intention in responding to malicious uniform resource locator (URL) in phishing email content.

It applied the protective motivation theory, the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour, the habit theory and the trust theory to examine the factors influencing internet banking users’ intention to click URLs in phishing emails. The study identifies individual and technological factors with ten hypotheses. A total of 368 Malaysian respondents voluntarily participated in an online survey conducted in the first week of March 2021. The partial least squares method provided in SmartPLS-3 was used to model the data.

The results revealed that individual factors, namely, internet banking experience, understanding the phishing meaning, response cost, trust and perceived ability were the significant influencing factors of internet banking users’ intention to click the link in phishing emails. This study also suggested that technological factors were not relevant in describing the behavioural intention of internet banking users in clicking the links in phishing emails.

The findings could contribute to Malaysian banking sectors and relevant government agencies in educating and increasing internet banking users’ awareness towards phishing emails.

The outcomes demonstrated the individual factors that influenced internet banking users’ intention in responding to phishing emails that are specific and relevant to Malaysia’s context.