Human-Centric Factors Influencing Home Users’ Susceptibility to Social Engineering Attacks: Synthesising Evidence Through Literature Review and Expert Validation

Publication Details

Publication Date

10/09/2026

Volume / Issue

Vol 1, Issue 4 (2026)

Article No.

008

Journal

British Journal of Contemporary Research

DOI

https://doi.org/10.67693/BJCR-VUUIQ3YC

Received

09 Aug 2026

Views

26

Downloads

15

Abstract

Social engineering attacks remain part of the strongest cybersecurity risks facing digital device users because they involve taking advantage of human behavioural weaknesses, as opposed to technical vulnerabilities. While corporate organisations have been benefiting from structured training and well-formulated defence policies, home users are standalone users who navigate digital systems with limited or no guidance, low awareness level and poor security practices. To safeguard digital assets amid the proliferation of dynamically evolving social engineering attack techniques, it is crucial to comprehend home users’ susceptible characteristics to cyber-attacks. This study, therefore, explored the human-centric factors that make home users vulnerable to social engineering attacks, using a sequential exploratory research approach. A synthetic literature review of peer-reviewed literature from 2017 to 2025 was conducted, followed by validation by six (6) cybersecurity and human-behaviour experts who formed a focus group. The mixed-method was followed by thematic analysis, which revealed that susceptibility factors are multidimensional and involve interactions among the general domains of broad behavioural factors: “socio-psychological, habitual, perceptual, and socio-emotional”. These findings provide a solid foundation that could be employed in developing an enhanced holistic framework to mitigate social engineering attacks among home users.

License

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . Free to read, share, and adapt with attribution.