Please, steal my money! The psychology of Auction Fraud

Online auctions are profitable. This presents an opportunity and an incentive for scammers. We ran a series of studies designed to help us better understand which mechanisms, traits and cues impact the decision to participate in fraudulent auctions. In Study 1 6609 participants answered general victimisation questions and filled out the Susceptibility to Persuasion scale.The results show that a number of persuasive mechanisms play an important role in gen-eral scam compliance. In Study 2 we focused on victims of auction fraud, where 280 participants were asked to answer general questions about online auctions and about a specific fraudulent event they have been involved in.We also administered HEXACO scale, a modified UPPS-IBS and Deceptiveness scale. The results showed that no auctioned item carried a higher risk of victimization. A number of traits and sub-domains were salient in the decision to participate, but none of the full HEXACO domains.