The advancement of mobile technology and banking services enabled users to use the mobile banking for a variety of tasks with their smartphones, bringing increased flexibility and value-added services to the customers. However, users still have still concerns regarding the security of mobile banking services. The lack of knowledge of the user about different security threats and mechanisms to improve their security represent a major opportunity for hackers and cyberattacks. Despite the fact that the younger students are more knowledgeable about technologies yet awareness is still a concern. Perceived security in the context of young users has not been examined before, although it is considered important in building customer trust. Therefore, this thesis aims to form a good understanding of this topic. On analyzing prior research, the subjects of trust and perceived security in mobile banking is approached by the literature review and an exploratory study that was conducted through qualitative semi-structured interviews. The information collected was carefully analyzed with proper tools. After analyzing the information an analysis of the literature findings and study finds was presented. This thesis examined and revealed that perceived security in mobile banking is important for young users. However, it was noticed that users would not leave the service due to their reliance on the bank assurances to cover their security losses, which means that most of the mobile banking young users trust their bank and technology given the security threats. In addition, this study revealed that the majority of users are unaware of security threats surrounding the mobile banking environment. It was found also that the most important mechanism for the user is authentication mechanisms. This thesis provides a general understanding of the security in mobile banking. It highlights that perceived security is a complex concept and is affected by various factors such as device, information quality, user experience and type of network connections. These factors should be carefully considered by users when using the technology. In conclusion, this thesis also implies banks to communicate effectively security information to users in order to avoid mobile banking users’ errors.

The internet has served as the virtual world since the beginning of the digital era, and it has provided consumers the valuable source of information and become a fundamental basis of e-commerce by passing the limit of time and distance of offline stores. It is hard to imagine our life without the internet. Because consumers store and access their private and financial information on the internet, information security is even more important than ever. Although many studies demonstrate the importance of information security to consumers, researchers have paid little attention to consumers\' inference processing underlying their perceptions of information security. We investigate how consumers infer and evaluate online information security based on consumer inference making process and metacognitive experience. We argue that consumers\' perceived security could be enhanced by simply increasing complexity, even if that increased complexity is meaningless. It is because consumers have a belief that security is achieved by sacrificing convenience or increasing complexity. We demonstrated that consumers evaluated a website more secure when asked to enter redundant information in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 suggested that disfluency and difficulty of retrieval could increase perceived security because metacognitive experience makes consumers misattribute their feeling of difficulty to technical difficulty. We found that the positive effect of disfluency was held when a product was not security-related. In Chapter 3, we focused on how to improve the accuracy of security judgments. We found that perceived security enhanced by meaningless complexity would be adjusted by asking specific dimensions of security (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability), and the positive impact of a disfluency effect could be debiased by providing participants the true source of their subjective difficulty. Furthermore, we demonstrated that consumers\' interpretation about accessibility experience varied depending on what kind of naïve theory was activated. Through a series of experiments, we demonstrated our arguments were valid and these results provided useful insights and implications about consumers\' inference processing and perception of information security. / Ph. D.

Gun violence has increased significantly in Sweden in the past years. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate whether the number of shootings has an impact on the residents' sense of perceived security in Sweden's metropolitan areas, with the control variables of the socio-demographic characteristics gender, age and education level. Previous research has investigated the relationship between perceived security and general crime, where the results show higher insecurity in relation to crime. In addition, individuals living in a socially vulnerable area characterized by low informal control experience higher insecurity than those who do not live in these areas. The study is based on the theories of social disorganization theory and the theory of ontological security. A multiple regression analysis was used where the data consisted of statistics on the number of shootings in Sweden and data from the Samhälle, Opinion and Media (SOM) survey from the year 2021. The result showed, in the full model, that there is an association between the number of shootings and perceived security, when shootings increase, so does insecurity. Regarding the geographical classification, residents in the metropolitan areas showed lower perceived insecurity in comparison to the rest of Sweden in relation to the number of shootings. Women and the low educated experienced higher insecurity than men and the highly educated respectively, while older age only had a small impact on the insecurity in relation to crime. A conclusion that can be drawn based on the study's results is that the number of shootings affects the perceived security negatively when several explanatory variables are examined together. Moreover, there are socio-demographic characteristics that affect the experience of security. Thus, future research should continue to investigate how the number of shootings can affect perceived security.

Use of computerized systems with user interfaces (UIs) is very high in the developed world, and is increasing rapidly everywhere else. The security of these systems are of utmost importance, but so is also the perception of security that people have of them. Therefore, this study investigates if there is a link between how usable systems with UIs are, and how securely they are perceived. This was done by constructing a custom and novel experimental setup, where 37 people (n=37) participated online through a website. The website guided participants through a realistic scenario, and then gave them a number of tasks to perform in a mock E-banking application. Participants then answered some questions regarding the usability and security of the mock E-banking application. This E-banking application was designed with the help of the Design Thinking methodology and heuristic evaluations. For most of the results, statistical significance could not be demonstrated. However, the results suggest that there may be a link between usability and perceived security, albeit quite weak. The relationship is hypothesized to be easily overshadowed by other aspects such as authentication procedure and reputation. / Användningen av datoriserade system med användargränssnitt (UI) är mycket hög i den utvecklade världen, och ökar snabbt i övriga världen. säkerheten hos dessa system är av yttersta vikt, men så är även hur säkert dessa system uppfattas av människor. Därför undersöker denna studie om det finns ett samband mellan hur användbart ett system med användargränssnitt är, och hur säkert det uppfattas. Detta gjordes genom att skapa en skräddarsydd och unik experimentell uppställning, där 37 personer (n=37) medverkade online via en webbplats. Webbplatsen guidade de medverkande genom ett realistiskt scenario och gav dem ett antal uppgifter att slutföra i en fiktiv internetbank. Deltagarna svarade sedan på ett antal frågor angående användbarheten och säkerheten hos den fiktiva internetbanken. Denna internetbank designades med hjälp av “Design Thinking”-metodologin och heuristiska utvärderingar. För de flesta resultaten kunde statistisk signfikans inte påvisas. Däremot antyder resultaten att det kan finnas en svag länk mellan användbarhet och upplevd säkerhet. En hypotes är att detta samband enkelt kan överskuggas av andra aspekter såsom autensieringsprocedur och rykte.

Förändringen av dagens bankmarknad sker successivt, en ny form av bankkontor med digitalisering etableras samtidigt som fysiska bankkontor avvecklas. Digitaliseringen har lett till att bankerna utvecklat en ny rådgivningstjänst, onlinemöte, som innebär att banker kan erbjuda finansiell rådgivning på valfri plats. Technology acceptance model och institutionell teori är diskuterade forskningsområden men är relativt outforskade i den empiriska kontexten för finansiell rådgivning via onlinemöte. Tidigare forskning har redovisat att faktorerna företagsimage, upplevd säkerhet samt webbplatskvalitet har en påverkan på bankkunders förtroende, men framhävt faktorn förtroende som avgörande vid acceptans av online-bankingtjänster. Studiens syfte är att skapa en förståelse gällande bankkunders acceptans av den nya rådgivningstjänsten onlinemöte. Studien har en positivistisk och deduktiv ansats som tillämpats i form av hypotesprövning. En kvantitativ metod präglar studien som genomfördes med datainsamlingsmetoden internetenkät. Resultatet av studien har baserats på 118 respondenter. Studiens resultat påvisar att bankkunder framhäver faktorn förtroende betydelsefull för dess acceptans av finansiell rådgivning via onlinemöte. Faktorn förtroende förklaras ha en medierad roll genom att faktorerna upplevd säkerhet och företagsimage kan reglera bankkundernas förtroende till rådgivningstjänsten onlinemöte. Faktorerna upplevd säkerhet och företagsimage påvisas medierade av faktorn förtroendet, eftersom de inte kunde påvisas ha signifikant direkt effekt för acceptans av rådgivningstjänsten onlinemöte. En begräsning i studien har varit att endast respondenter som genomfört ett traditionellt rådgivningsmöte via ett bankkontor har studerats. Studien bidrar med ett värde till Sveriges banker eftersom studien påvisar att faktorerna är betydelsefulla att beakta vid etablering av den nya rådgivningstjänsten onlinemöte. / The ongoing changes in today's banking market is taking place gradually, a new form of bank branches with digitization are established while the physical bank branch shuts down. Digitalization has led to banks developed a new financial advisory service, online meeting, which means that banks can provide their banking clients with financial advice at any location. Technology acceptance model and institutional theory are widely researched and debated research fields but have a research gap within the context of financial advice through online meeting. Previous research has identified that corporate image, perceived security and website quality has an impact on banking customers' trust, but trust is emphasizing as important for acceptance of online banking services. The purpose is to create an understanding of the banking customer’s acceptance of online meeting. The study has a positivistic and deductive approach, applied by hypothesis tests. A quantitative method characterizes the study and were conducted using an internet survey. The result of the study is based on 118 respondents. The results indicate that banking customers emphasize trust as important for the acceptance of online meetings. Trust declared a mediating role because perceived security and corporate image can regulate banking customer trust to online meetings. Trust has a mediating role because perceived security and corporate image couldn’t show a significant effect on the acceptance of online meeting. The study is limited to have researched only respondents who had completed a traditional financial advice session through a bank branch. The study contributes with value to the banks, because it can be demonstrated that these factors are important to take into account with the establishment of online meeting.

MCom (Business Information Systems) / Department of Business Information Systems / Today, information and communication technologies (ICT) have become an integral part of humans lives more especially in business, be it those in developed or developing countries. The evolution of ICT’s has also led to the introduction of e-Commerce services. Both the public and private sectors, develop these technologies with customer satisfaction in mind. Out of all the efforts by businesses and ICT experts, e-commerce systems continue to fail because of low user acceptance and user attitude, especially in developing nations. Security issues are known to be of top most concern for online shoppers. A survey was administered to 161 respondents, to find out how cyber security affects consumer’s intentions and actual use of e-commerce systems. The study encompasses both users of e-commerce systems and non-users of e-commerce systems across Vhembe district of Limpopo Province in South Africa. A quantitative research approach was used. The findings revealed that perceived security was the main concern for non-users of e-commerce intentions to use e-commerce systems because of lack of information and lack of trust on e-commerce systems. The study also revealed that users of e-commerce systems are still concerned about security, even though they intend to continue using e-commerce systems. For the success of e-commerce in rural communities, government needs to join hands with retailers and SME’s to start awareness campaigns that will clarify how e-commerce systems work and eradicate negative perception on e-commerce systems. / NRF

This research contributes to the cloud computing (CC) literature and information science research by addressing the reality of information sharing and storage behavior (ISSB) of the users' personal information via CC. Gathering information about usage also allows this research to address the paradox between the research and practice. Additionally, this research explores the concept of trust and its role in the behavioral change relative to CC. The findings help reconcile the paradox between the two realms. Essay1 develops and tests cloud computing usage model (CCUM) that assesses ISSB. This model considers the main adoption determinants and the main drawbacks of CC. The study measures the main concerns of users found in the literature, perceived security and perceived privacy. The findings prove surprising on these concerns. Using multiple regression to analyze 129 valid survey responses, the results find that CC users are less concerned about the major issues of security and privacy and will use the technology based on peer usage. Essay 2 examines why users ignore the technology issues and elect to replace the traditional mechanisms for handling their personal information. The results of an interview-based study conducted on 11 normal users and 11 IT professionals clarify their perceptions about CC and examine its readiness to handle their information from an end-user perspective. Essay 3 explores the CC literature to identify the major factors associated with the users' trust beliefs. The research conducted in this essay groups these factors into three categories. The posited and tested model examines the effect of perceived trust on ISSB. A structural equation modeling approach is used to analyze 1228 valid responses and tests the developed cloud computing trust model. The results provide multiple implications for CC researchers, managers, and service providers.

This dissertation addresses research questions related to defining a smart city and the associated activities. The general research question is explored in the dissertation via the conduct of three related studies. The finding from these three investigations are presented in the results section as 3 essays that collectively examine the smart city phenomena as it has emerged within the City. Essay 1 assesses building municipal open data capability. The study proposed an Opendata Roadmap Framework to enhance the organization's dynamic capability. The results provide a valuable practical framework to help cities develop open data capability. The results also provide a comparative study or benchmark for similar initiatives with other regional cities and within the nation. Essay 2 measures the residents' understanding and beliefs about smart cities. This portion of the research used a qualitative method that included interviewing residents and city officials to understand their definition of a smart city and what they believe makes a city smart. The interviews focused on understanding resident engagement because it is an important characteristic of a smart city. The gap between the city officials and residents understanding was examined. In addition, the interviews help identify essential factors associated with smart cities like trust in government, perceived security, perceived privacy, trust in technology, and perceived monetary value. Essay 3 examines the acceptance of smart city technologies and factors that affect the adoption of such technologies. This essay uses the insights from the other two essays to propose a smart city Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) extension labelled Smart City UTAUT (SC-UTAUT). The new proposed model was tested using a survey method. The 1,786 valid responses were used to test the proposed structural equation model using Smart PLS. Results show a significant relationship between trust in technology, trust in government, perceived monetary value, effort expectancy, self-efficacy, and behavioral intention. The dissertation concludes with a summary of how the three essays make a cumulative contribution to the literature as well as providing practical guidance for becoming a smart city.

A mobile wallet is a mobile application that is intended to replace leather wallets. With high mobile and Internet penetration and increased life expectancy in developed economies, adoption of mobile wallets by the older population is becoming more important due to new trends. Therefore, this thesis aims to understand and increase adoption of mobile wallets in developed economies by the citizens between the ages of 50 to 75. Based on the mobile payment technology acceptance model (MPTAM) and an extensive literature review, a simplified model is suggested. Three sub-questions (on 1 - social influence, 2 - perceived security, trust and risks, and 3 – perceived ease of use) are proposed for further study, which has been suggested in the literature to have more importance for the targeted demography. An exploratory qualitative study based on in-depth semi-structured interviews was conducted. The findings show that social influence can have direct or indirect effects. Moreover, several factors were identified that seems to have impacts on the degree to which a content can influence people. In addition, perceived trust, security, and risks seem to be the most important impediment for the adoption of mobile wallets, especially for risk-averse people. Furthermore, perceived ease of use can improve the values that mobile wallets may provide. Perceived ease of use is more important for the targeted age group since some of the potential users in this age group has reduced learning and physical abilities. Finally, many implications of the findings and methods to improve the adoption of mobile wallets for the selected demography, i.e. restriction and customization, use of familiar design, use of strong brands, etc. are suggested.