Explaining Cybercrime

• In Event: WG-PLACE 4: Perspectives on Crime and Criminal Behaviour

Abstract

This study aims to analyse deviant cybercrime from the perspective of Situational Action Theory (SAT). According to SAT, deviant action is conceptualised as a consequence of a two-step perception-choice process, where the perception of an opportunity is explained by a moral filter in the first step and the choice of deviant action is explained by the conditional relevance of controls (Wikström & Treiber, 2015) in the second step. Our focus is on the first stage, mainly on morality and the moral filter. To this end, we introduce a new way of measuring morality. In contrast to previous studies, which mostly neglected the situational character of morality, as proposed by SAT, we use vignettes to account for conditional relevance. To test our assumptions, we use the modelling strategy introduced by Eifler and Leitgöb (2021) to analyse the perception-choice process, which is based on combining a factorial survey approach (Wallander, 2009; Piquero et al., 2021; Treischl & Wolbring, 2022) with a sequential logit model (Buis, 2011, 2017). Furthermore, we measure both morality and self-control with instruments specified according to the definitions of these concepts in the SAT.

Authors

• Alexander Betz, KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

• Laurin Schwemer, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg