Understanding the determinants of falls for deception in telecommunications fraud

Computer-mediated communication has become a platform on which perpetrators deceive potential victims. Although telecommunications fraud has attracted considerable interest, limited research has discussed the determinants of what people perceive as persuasive concerning telecommunications fraud. This study combines Social Cognitive Theory and Mimicry-Deception Theory to investigate the antecedents and consequences of victim-perceived persuasiveness with fraud message. Data collected from 300 fraud victims were examined to test the proposed model. The results showed that the plausibility of deception, building of rapport, and resource extraction significantly and positively influenced perceived fraud message persuasiveness, while perceived persuasiveness had a strong positive association with falls for deception. The results also revealed that both anti-deception self-efficacy and reward-based outcome expectations moderated the relationship between resource extraction and perceived persuasiveness, while perceived time pressure from opportunity costs moderated the relationship between perceived persuasiveness and falls for deception. Several theoretical and practical implications are discussed.