Do You Think It Is Fair? Effects of Data Breach Response Actions on Customer Justice

The digitization of corporate processes and activities, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, does not only hold advantages. Rapidly implemented software systems lead to an increased risk of data breaches, inducing adverse effects. As a countermeasure, companies can apply data breach response actions. In this paper, drawing on service failure literature and justice theory, we examine how companies’ actual response actions affect customers’ justice perceptions. By conducting a scenario-based experiment, we investigate how response action can be differentiated through the perception of the three dimensions of justice theory. The results suggest that for some response actions previous findings from service failure recovery are transferable. Our results indicate that distributive and procedural justice can be influenced by corporate response actions. However, the effects on interactional justice appear to be limited. We discuss the applicability of justice theory in the scope of data breaches.