• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.644-672
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• 2019

Negative consequences incurred from employees' non-work-related computing (NWRC) have been one of the security-related issues in information intensive organizations. While most studies have focused on the factors that motivate employees to engage in NWRC, this study examines the mediating effect of moral beliefs on the relationship between sanctions and NWRC using a moral beliefs-based model. The research model posits that the formal (i.e., punishment severity and detection certainty) and informal sanctions (subjective norms and descriptive norms) enhance employees' moral beliefs against NWRC intention. From a cross-sectional scenario-based survey involving 176 employees working at banks in Mongolia, our results indicate that moral beliefs fully mediate the relationship between detection certainty/subjective norms and NWRC intention and act as a partial mediator in the relationship between descriptive norms and NWRC. The findings from this study present empirical evidence that both informal and formal sanctions could be an effective deterrent for NWRC intention through employees' moral beliefs.