Prosocial rule breaking on health information security at healthcare organisations in South Korea

Regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), establish standards to protect patients' medical records from security breaches. Insiders' prosocial misbehaviour within healthcare organisations can cause significant damage to relevant stakeholders. Such behaviour without malicious intention needs to be better understood and carefully managed from the perspective of prosocial behaviour. For this study, a research model was developed that includes the factors influencing student nurses' intention to disclose patient health information. The model was empirically tested with nursing students in South Korea with a scenario-based experiment. We find that both altruistic (impact on others) and egoistic (impact on the self) motivations are significantly important in raising situational empathy. On the other hand, an egoistic motivation (impact on the self) significantly affects people's perception of their responsibility, which mediates the relationship between situational empathy and prosocial intention to disclose. The implications of our findings are discussed.