Understanding Older Adults’ Vulnerability and Reactions to Telecommunication Fraud: The Effects of Personality and Cognition

Abstract

Older adults are one of the high-risk groups vulnerable to telecommunication fraud, but little is known about what strategies will be taken by them to fight telecommunication fraud and what the underlying rationales are behind their reactions. Therefore, this study examined it through three phases. In phase 1, sixty older adults participated in a face-to-face survey of possible influence of personality and cognition. Then, they judged the authenticity of messages they have read on a real phone and were interviewed. Phase 2 is an online questionnaire survey to identify two more factors to enrich the results of phase 1. Phase 3 is a text analysis of 120 supreme court verdicts. The results reveal individual differences in anti-fraud strategies and show that older adults adopted different strategies to address potential telecom fraud. Particularly, older adults with lower need for cognition (NFC) were more likely to adopt extremely conservative strategies.