Call to claim your prize: Perceived benefits and risk drive intention to comply in a mass marketing scam.

Abstract

Mass marketing scams extract an enormous toll, yet the literature on scams is just emerging. In Experiment 1, 211 adults reviewed a solicitation and rated their intention of contacting an "activation number" for a prize. Scarcity and authority were manipulated. Many (48.82%) indicated some willingness to contact to "activate" the winnings. Intention of responding was inversely related to the perception of risk (b ϭ Ϫ.441, p Ͻ .001) and positively associated with perception of benefits (b ϭ .554, p Ͻ .001), but not with the experimental condition. In Experiment 2, 291 adults were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions (low, medium, or high activation fee), and were asked to report willingness to contact. Activation fees decreased intent to contact, but percentages remained high (25.70%), with higher perception of risk reducing contact rates (b ϭ Ϫ.581, p Ͻ .001), and benefit perception increasing intent to contact (b ϭ .381, p Ͻ .001). Our studies indicate that consumers are responding to perceived risks and benefits in their decision-making, regardless of persuasion elements used by scammers. In summary, our studies find that consumers with lower levels of education and high perception of benefits are at increased risk for mass marketing scams.

Email fraud: The search for psychological predictors of susceptibility

“…We believe this study offers a highly important contribution to the literature, identifying some of the psychological constructs that contribute to email fraud susceptibility. In line with recommendations for further research in this area from Williams et al [4] and Wood et al [48], this paper offers the first comprehensive assessment of a wide range of constructs in an effort to establish a cognitive profile of susceptibility. A theoretical model outlined by Jones et al [5] based on the existing literature integrates three core elements as explanations of susceptibility to a phishing email in the moment—cognitive processing as a result of situational factors, individual differences between users, and persuasiveness of email content.…”

The Role of Analytical Reasoning and Source Credibility on the Evaluation of Real and Fake Full-Length News Articles

“…Our study, like the majority of previous work, focused on a rather homogeneous (e.g., in terms of race/ethnicity and age) sample. Based on growing evidence that sensitivity for detection of deceptive cues decreases with chronological age (Ebner et al, 2020;Grilli et al, in press;Zebrowitz, Ward, Boshyan, Gutchess, & Hadjikhani, 2018) as well as varies by gender and marital status (Alves & Wilson, 2008), education (Wood, Liu, Hanoch, Xi, & Klapatch, 2018), and income (James, Boyle, & Bennett, 2014), we propose examining fake news detection using more diverse samples to move this research forward (Pehlivanoglu et al, 2020). For example, older compared to younger individuals were more likely to share fake news (Grinberg, Joseph, Friedland, Swire-Thompson, & Lazer, 2019;Guess et al, 2019).…”

The Scams Among Us: Who Falls Prey and Why

“…The studies by Anderson (2019), Mueller et al (2020), and Modic et al (2018) are the only ones we know of that have included a risk-taking measure. Using a different approach, Mueller et al (2020) and Wood et al (2018) asked participants to indicate how beneficial and how risky they perceived scam solicitations to be. Results of the two studies converged, revealing that participants' benefit and risk perceptions were the main predictors of intentions to respond to the scam solicitations.…”