Email Phishing Prevention: An Explainable Nudging Approach

This paper tests whether adding plain-language AI explanations to phishing warning prompts (digital nudges) helps people avoid phishing emails. In a controlled experiment, the explainable-AI nudge improved users' phishing-detection accuracy by about 10% and reduced their mental effort compared to a standard warning or no warning. The work shows that explaining why something looks suspicious makes security warnings more effective.