Online Fraud: Does Self-Control Predict Online Scam Compliance?

Joanne Alker. 2015

Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine whether or not corroborating evidence could be found to support David Modic’s (2012) conclusion that self-control is the most influential predictor (in terms of individual differences) of online scam compliance. There is a strong rationale to suggest that self-control is influential in making the risky decision to respond to a fraudulent email, yet the methodology used in Modic’s research employs an indirect measure of scam compliance, which means the conclusions drawn may not be valid. Therefore this study aims to retest this hypothesis using a more direct measure; performance on an email fraud detection task. This study used 20 participants recruited via opportunity sampling (mostly students at Lancaster University). Participants completed 3 tasks; an email fraud detection task, a modified version of the online scenario task used by Modic, and a brief self-control scale. The scores were correlated against each other, and no significant relationships were found. This suggests that Modic’s measure of scam compliance may not necessarily be valid, and also that self-control may not be a significant predictor, and therefore not a helpful factor to focus on when trying to help protect internet users from scam victimisation. However, this research has a number of limitations, including a relatively low sample size, meaning that conclusions must be drawn with caution. Future research should aim to retest this hypothesis using a more direct measure of scam compliance (such as the one used in this study), but using a larger, more diverse sample.