Online cheating at the intersection of the dark triad and fraud diamond

Academic misconduct is an issue that has plagued educators for as long as there have been formal performance assessments, and the technological advances in recent years have exacerbated an already vexing problem. Today’s student has a broad array of resources available to assist in their learning process. Unfortunately, many of those resources can be used to actively circumvent that process. A variety of assignment assistance websites offer students fee-based access to content ranging from publisher-provided test banks and homework solutions to course specific material generated by the instructor. Unauthorized access to these materials constitutes academic fraud. In this study we evaluate student use of these websites by developing a comprehensive framework consisting of the Dark Triad constellation of personality traits and the Fraud Diamond elements. We find that each Dark Triad trait exerts a unique influence on the Fraud Diamond elements, which in turn are associated with students’ intentions to access and use these websites.