Fraud susceptibility and prevention: Insight from behavioural science

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Abstract

Fraud (or scams) is the most common crime, representing almost half of all reported crimes. The financial cost to individuals and organisations is estimated to be a staggering $5 trillion per year (roughly 4 times the 2024 UK budget), as well as having a devasting emotional and psychological impact on victims. Despite these grim data, we still have limited knowledge of why people fall prey to scams and what preventive measures can be employed to reduce compliance. In this talk, I will present data from a range of experiments that examine factors that can help predict victimization and ones that might help reduce compliance.

The Speaker

Yaniv Hanoch is a decision scientist with an interdisciplinary background. Before joining Coventry University, he was a Professor of Decision Sciences at Southampton University Business School and the School of Psychology at Plymouth University. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and the UCLA/Rand Post-Doctoral Training Program in Public Health.

His research examines decision-making and risk-taking across the lifespan and in multiple domains. He is investigating the mechanism involved in falling prey to scams, and on misinformation spreading. He is interested in questions regarding health or medical decision-making, how lifespan changes impact risk-taking, and decisions regarding sustainability.

Dr. Hanoch has published extensively in economic, public health and psychology journals. He is an Associate Editor in Judgment and Decision Making and is the incoming Co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Economic Psychology.