Exploring the determinants of victimization and fear of online identity theft: an empirical study
Open accessAbstract
The present study aims at understanding what factors contribute to the explanation of online identity theft (OIT) victimization and fear, using the Routine Activity Theory (RAT). Additionally, it tries to uncover the influence of factors such as sociodemographic variables, offline fear of crime, and computer perception skills. Data for the present study were collected from a self-reported online survey administered to a sample of university students and staff (N = 832, 66% female). Concerning the OIT victimization, binary logistic regression analysis showed that those who do not used credit card had lower odds of becoming an OIT victim, and those who reported visiting risky contents presented higher odds of becoming an OIT victim. Moreover, males were less likely than females of being an OIT victim. In turn, fear of OIT was explained by socioeconomic status (negatively associated), education (positively associated) and by fear of crime in general (positively associated). In addition, subjects who reported more online interaction with strangers were less fearful, and those reported more avoiding behaviors reported higher levels of fear of OIT. Finally, subjects with higher computer skills are less fearful. These results will be discussed in the line of routine activities approach and implications for online preventive behaviors will be outlined.
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Lifestyles/routine activity theory has been applied to identity theft, cybercrime, and fraud.
“Although this theory was originally developed to explain direct-contact predatory offenses, it has also been applied to identity theft (Burnes et al. 2020;Guedes et al. 2022;Reynolds 2021), cybercrime (Khey and Sainato 2013;Leukfeldt and Yar 2016), and fraud (DeLiema 2018; Lee et al. 2022).”
From Profiling consumers who reported mass marketing scams: demographic characteristics and emotional sentiments associated with victimization (2024) · cites this paper as Guedes et al. 2022
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
DeLiema, M., & Witt, P. (2024) · Security Journal · doi:10.1057/s41284-023-00401-5 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
“Although this theory was originally developed to explain direct-contact predatory offenses, it has also been applied to identity theft (Burnes et al. 2020; Guedes et al. 2022; Reynolds 2021), cybercrime (Khey and Sainato 2013; Leukfeldt and Yar 2016), and fraud (DeLiema 2018; Lee et al. 2022).”
- Authors
- Guedes, I., Martins, M., & Cardoso, C. S.
- Affiliations
- Universidade do Porto (PT)
- Corresponding author
- Guedes, Inês
- Venue
- Security Journal
- Published
- 2022-07-21
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 472-497
- ISSN
- 0955-1662 (ISSN-L)
- 1743-4645
- PMC
- PMC9302955
- OpenAlex
- W4286489859
- Cited by
- 43
- References
- 58
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 9.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Security Journal (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Information and Cyber Security
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Keywords
- online identity theft, victimization, fear of crime, routine activity theory, credit card usage, gender differences, socioeconomic status, computer skills, avoidance behavior, university students
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