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Open Access

REVIEW

Trust and Cybersecurity Behaviours: A Scoping Review

Shadi Melebari, Muhammad Atif Ur Rehman*, Ali Kashif Bashir, Mohammed Al-Khalidi
Department of Computing and Mathematics, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
* Corresponding Author: Muhammad Atif Ur Rehman. Email: email

Computers, Materials & Continua https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2026.085515

Received 12 May 2026; Accepted 20 July 2026; Published online 12 August 2026

Abstract

Trust plays an important role in shaping human behaviour in cybersecurity contexts, influencing how individuals interact with digital systems and respond to security practices. However, existing research on trust and cybersecurity behaviours remains fragmented, with different studies adopting varied definitions of trust and examining a wide range of behavioural outcomes. This scoping review aims to systematically map and synthesise the literature on trust and cybersecurity behaviours. Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, relevant studies were identified, screened, and analysed to examine how trust has been conceptualised, what types of behaviour have been studied, and which theoretical and methodological approaches have been used. The findings show that trust is a multi-dimensional construct, including system, institutional, interpersonal, and generalised forms, and that it has been examined in relation to different cybersecurity behaviours across human and system-level contexts. However, the direction of the trust–behaviour relationship remains unclear or mixed in the majority of included studies, particularly within the human-focused subset of 19 studies, which suggests that current evidence is insufficient to establish a stable or consistent relationship between trust and cybersecurity behaviour. In the human-focused subset, adoption and compliance behaviours were the most commonly examined, while social engineering received less attention; authentication and technical risk behaviours were not examined in any human-focused study. This review contributes to the literature by providing a structured overview of how trust has been conceptualised, measured, and studied in cybersecurity contexts, and by identifying key conceptual, methodological, and empirical gaps that warrant further investigation.

Keywords

Trust; cybersecurity; risky behaviour; human factors; socio-technical systems; PRISMA-ScR; scoping review

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