Project Details
Projekt
The impact of voluntary security labels for IoT products on consumers’ willingness to pay: mediating, moderating, and spillover effects
Subject Area
Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 566533114
Internet of Things (IoT) consumer products are enjoying increasing popularity. However, severe security vulnerabilities of many IoT products and serious cyberattacks such as the Mirai botnet call for stronger security regulations. Product labeling is a widespread regulation instrument and has been recently proposed for IoT by many jurisdictions, including the EU Cybersecurity Act 2019 (Article 56), which prescribes voluntary security certification. Also, the German IT-Sicherheitsgesetz 2.0 § 9c defines a voluntary security label (freiwilliges IT-Sicherheitskennzeichen), which has by now been implemented by the German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik). However, the ability of voluntary security labels in providing incentives for IoT manufactures to produce more secure IoT products remains unclear. To fill this gap, we thoroughly investigate the effect of voluntary security labels on willingness to pay for IoT products. We consider one moderator (perceived security risk) and three mediators (perceived autonomy, accessibility of security-related thoughts, product type) of the relationship between voluntarily security labels and WTP for IoT products. Furthermore, we examine the spillover effects of voluntary security labels on competitive products. To this end, we conduct several controlled online experiments and the corresponding prestudies. Investigating factors that increase consumers’ WTP for IoT products with voluntary security labels will help to create evidence-based economic incentives for IoT manufacturers to invest into security labelling. This can improve the security of IoT products, because IoT manufacturers must meet certain security requirements in order to mark their products with an IoT security label.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
