An Empirical Analysis Of Risk Aversion In Malware Infections

We present in this paper the results from a field study we conducted over a 4-month period. The experience aimed at evaluating the impact of the technological and human factors on the risk of getting infected by malware.In this article, we applied the economic concept of risk aversion in order to study the behaviour of users towards the risk of malware infection. Our results show that younger users and men in particular, with a higher level of expertise in computer science are more susceptible to open multiple web accounts and install more software from the Internet. Furthermore, the increase in the level of expertise in computer science, creates in men a negative attitude towards alert messages of antivirus; while in women, the opposite happens.