Beyond Deterrence: A Systematic Review of the Role of Autonomous Motivation in Organizational Security Behavior Studies

What drives employees to ensure security when handling information assets in organizations? There is growing interest from the security behavior community in how autonomous motivators shape employees’ security-related behaviors. To reconcile the scattered viewpoints on autonomous motivation and synthesize findings from studies utilizing various theoretical frameworks, we systematically reviewed relevant publications. We present a preregistered literature review that investigated (a) what forms of autonomous motivation have been examined in organizational security contexts, (b) which behaviors/behavioral intentions are related to autonomous motivators, and (c) how autonomous motivation affects employees’ security behaviors. Based on an initial set of 432 papers, filtered down to 45 studies, we identified 17 unique autonomous motivators and three types of related security behaviors. This review not only develops a refined taxonomy of autonomous motivation related to security behaviors but also charts a path forward for future research on autonomous motivation in human-centered security.