Third-person perception of cybersecurity risks and its influence on government employees’ cybersecurity compliance and policy recommendations

Drawing from the lens of the Third-Person Effect (TPE) framework, this study investigates the cybersecurity perceptions and compliance practices among government employees at the provincial level in Vietnam. Results from its structural equation modeling reveal that together with a few traditional antecedents of TPE, participants’ third-person perception (TPP) was a strong predictor of their behavioral responses (e.g., policy recommendations and cybersecurity compliance), reinforcing the robustness of this theoretical model in a new domain. The antecedents, however, demonstrated more predictive power on the behavioral rather than the perceptual component within this framework. Both theoretical and practical implications of this study were discussed in the context of increasing cybersecurity risks and the importance of human factors in preventing cyberattacks within the government sector.