The influence of interpersonal factors on telecommuting employees’ cybercrime preventative behaviours during the pandemic

The pandemic forced a major shift in the way employees were completing their work duties. This meant that there was an increased dependence on cyberspace to perform work duties. Although this had its benefits, it also came with its challenges. Cybercrimes, in specific, increased dramatically as more and more people were using cyberspace. Cybercriminals evolved their attacks, and many more people began to fall victim to these cybercriminals. It was the sudden shift to telecommuting which meant that people did not have the correct cybercrime preventative behaviours which could help them to fight these criminals. Telecommuting also meant that employees now had a different work environment, which meant that the interpersonal factors that employees had were different from traditional workspaces. There are limited studies addressing this problem and certainly very few in the South African context. Therefore, this empirical report presents the influence of interpersonal factors on telecommuting employees’ cybercrime preventative behaviours. An adapted framework is proposed and evaluated using data collected from 209 South African employees. Descriptive statistics and data analysis were conducted through IBM SPSS and PLS-SEM, respectively. The results uphold the suitability of the adapted Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour model. The results show that the intention to perform cybercrime preventative behaviours has a strong impact on an employee’s performing those cybercrime preventative behaviours. It also shows how the habit of an employee with regard to cybercrime preventative behaviours also has a strong impact on the employees performing these preventative behaviours.