Better Angry Than Afraid: The Case of Post Data Breach Emotions on Customer Engagement

Abstract

Extant research on data breach events primarily focus on the information technology lapses and delayed financial outcomes with less emphasis on the behavior of consumers. Essentially, current research prioritizes the 'what' of data breaches, largely ignoring the question of 'why.' Our research seeks to fill a gap in the research design of prior studies on data breaches and customer behaviors by considering the customer emotions of anger and fear. While prior research has focused on anger due to its contagious nature, our results demonstrate that fear is the most influential emotion leading to changed behavior and/or lower revisit intentions. This article employs text and sentiment analysis of consumer responses to a data breach event to determine emotional response and revisit intentions. We find that angry customers may vent but will return with no meaningful change in their behavior. Unlike prior research, we also focus on fear and find that fearful customers retreat and disengage, behaving differently from angry customers. Managerial implications of this research illustrate the need to address fearful customers differently after a data breach to avoid reduced firm interactions and withdrawal behavior as opposed to merely reducing anger in the media as hitherto suggested.