  Phishing attacks are prevalent and humans are central to this online identity
theft attack, which aims to steal victims' sensitive and personal information
such as username, password, and online banking details. There are many
anti-phishing tools developed to thwart against phishing attacks. Since humans
are the weakest link in phishing, it is important to educate them to detect and
avoid phishing attacks. One can argue self-efficacy is one of the most
important determinants of individual's motivation in phishing threat avoidance
behavior, which has co-relation with knowledge. The proposed research endeavors
on the user's self-efficacy in order to enhance the individual's phishing
threat avoidance behavior through their motivation. Using social cognitive
theory, we explored that various knowledge attributes such as observational
(vicarious) knowledge, heuristic knowledge and structural knowledge contributes
immensely towards the individual's self-efficacy to enhance phishing threat
prevention behavior. A theoretical framework is then developed depicting the
mechanism that links knowledge attributes, self-efficacy, threat avoidance
motivation that leads to users' threat avoidance behavior. Finally, a gaming
prototype is designed incooperating the knowledge elements identified in this
research that aimed to enhance individual's self-efficacy in phishing threat
avoidance behavior.
