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Can You Hear Me Now? Telemarketing Fraud Victimization and Lifestyles

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Abstract

Researchers have used lifestyle theory to delineate patterns surrounding various forms of victimization. Much of this research focuses on conventional crimes and demonstrates a seemingly consistent pattern in terms of victim age: older victim’s lifestyles reduce their risk for conventional victimization, but may increase their risk for other forms of victimization. Using lifestyle/routine activity theory as a guide, this study explores whether the lifestyles and activities of older persons are tied to their risk of being targeted for telemarketing fraud. Our findings suggest that victimization risk for telemarketing fraud does not vary across the life-course, and that lifestyles of older persons are not tied to telemarketing fraud victimization. Factors tied to victimization include neighborhood disorder and being employed part-time. Implications are provided.

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Notes

  1. See appendix A for descriptive statistics for the three samples that form the full dataset. We employ all three samples as a way of increasing the diversity of the individuals included in the final sample. Administering a survey to individuals in-person may have permitted us to reach groups that may not have participated in a telephone survey. This may also translate into a differential susceptibility to telemarketing fraud, which is facilitated by telephone contact, compared to persons who are willing to participate in a telephone survey.

  2. There were 1,156 participants who provided valid data for the telemarketing fraud targeting item, and with listwise deletion for cases missing on the independent variables, the final sample size was 924 for the model predicting telemarketing fraud targeting. Based on the telemarketing targeting item, 481 participants reported that they had been targeted and were used to create a “targeted” subsample for analysis. After listwise deletion for missing cases, a final sample of 384 targeted participants were included in the model predicting telemarketing fraud victimization. The characteristics of the final sample for the regression model predicting targeting were very similar to the characteristics of the full sample (See Appendix B for analytic sample characteristics).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, Georgia Southern University, PO Box 8105, Statesboro, GA, 30460-8105, USA

    Christina Policastro

  2. Office of Academic Affairs, Old Dominion University, 210e Koch Hall, Norfolk, VA, 23529, USA

    Brian K. Payne

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  1. Christina Policastro
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  2. Brian K. Payne
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Correspondence to Christina Policastro.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 5 Characteristics of adult, phone, and student samples
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Appendix 2

Table 6 Characteristics of analytic samples
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Policastro, C., Payne, B.K. Can You Hear Me Now? Telemarketing Fraud Victimization and Lifestyles. Am J Crim Just 40, 620–638 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-014-9279-x

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