Determinants of reporting cybercrime: A comparison between identity theft, consumer fraud, and hacking
| Author | Wim Bernasco,Steve G.A. van de Weijer,Rutger Leukfeldt |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370818773610 |
| Published date | 01 July 2019 |
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818773610
European Journal of Criminology
2019, Vol. 16(4) 486 –508
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370818773610
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Determinants of reporting
cybercrime: A comparison
between identity theft,
consumer fraud, and hacking
Steve G.A. van de Weijer
Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), The Netherlands
Rutger Leukfeldt
Cybersecurity and SME Research Group at The Hague University of Applied Sciences; Netherlands Institute
for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), The Netherlands
Wim Bernasco
Department of Spatial Economics, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam;
Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), The Netherlands
Abstract
Although the prevalence of cybercrime has increased rapidly, most victims do not report
these offenses to the police. This is the first study that compares associations between victim
characteristics and crime reporting behavior for traditional crimes versus cybercrimes. Data from
four waves of a Dutch cross-sectional population survey are used (N = 97,186 victims). Results
show that cybercrimes are among the least reported types of crime. Moreover, the determinants
of crime reporting differ between traditional crimes and cybercrimes, between different types of
cybercrime (that is, identity theft, consumer fraud, hacking), and between reporting cybercrimes to
the police and to other organizations. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Keywords
Crime reporting, cybercrime, hacking, police, victims
Introduction
It is of great importance for law enforcement that victims of crimes report these crimes
to the police. A victim report improves the police’s knowledge of the prevalence of
different types of crimes, and is usually necessary to start a criminal investigation.
Corresponding author:
Steve G.A. van de Weijer, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), PO
Box 71304, Amsterdam, 1008 BH, The Netherlands.
Email: svandeweijer@nscr.nl
773610EUC0010.1177/1477370818773610European Journal of Criminologyvan de Weijer et al.
research-article2018
Article
van de Weijer et al. 487
Nevertheless, in most Western countries many crimes are not reported to the police
(Goudriaan et al., 2004). During recent decades, a vast and growing number of studies
have investigated which characteristics of crimes, perpetrators, victims, and regions are
associated with the victim’s choice of whether to report a crime after victimization.
These studies focus on reporting crimes after victimization of traditional crimes, includ-
ing violent crimes, property crimes, and vandalism. Although some studies have com-
pared reporting rates after victimization of different types of white-collar crime (for
example, Huff et al., 2010), identity theft (for example, Copes et al., 2010), and cyber-
crime (for example, Domenie et al., 2013; Statistics Netherlands, 2016), no previous
study has investigated the victim characteristics associated with the reporting of cyber-
crime victimization. Therefore, it is unknown whether theories and findings on tradi-
tional crime also apply to the reporting of cybercrime victimization.
This knowledge gap needs to be addressed for two reasons. First, it is clear that during
the last two decades the prevalence of cybercrime has increased rapidly and cybercrime
has become part of everyday life of citizens. For example, in the Netherlands, the coun-
try in which the current study is conducted, Dutch Statistics reported that a considerable
percentage of Dutch citizens have been the victim of identity fraud (0.6 percent), con-
sumer fraud (3.5 percent), or hacking (5.1 percent) (Statistic Netherlands, 2016). A field
trial in England and Wales to improve the collection and presentation of cybercrime
statistics in the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows almost 2.5 million hacking
and malware incidents in 12 months (ONS, 2016). The Swedish Crime Survey reveals
that the percentage of people exposed to fraud in 2014 was 3.1 percent, of which 44
percent involved the Internet (Bra, 2015).
Second, respondents from law enforcement agencies in the study by Leukfeldt et al.
(2013b) into the organization of the Dutch police regarding the fight against cybercrime,
note that one of the major obstacles regarding cybercrime entering the criminal justice
system is that victims do not always report it to the police. Furthermore, based on a self-
report study, Domenie et al. (2013) show that only 13.4 percent of victims of a range of
cybercrimes report this crime to the police, the lowest being hacking victims (4.1 per-
cent), the highest being stalking victims (30.4 percent). Van de Weijer and Bernasco
(2016) also show that less than a quarter of the victims of identity theft and consumer
fraud and less than 10 percent of the victims of hacking reported these crimes to the
police. These numbers show the importance of gaining more information on the determi-
nants of reporting cybercrime victimization, in order that policies can be developed to
stimulate the reporting of cybercrime victimization.
A recent study among Australian online fraud victims showed that one of the reasons
for not reporting victimization to the police could be the vast array of agencies and
organizations to which victims can report such fraud. These agencies and organizations
include, for example, law enforcement agencies, banks, consumer protection agencies,
telecommunications and Internet service providers, and website providers (Cross et al.,
2016). As a consequence, the victims might not know to which organization they should
report their victimization, it may be necessary for victims to report to multiple organiza-
tions, and victims may be referred from one organization to another without getting any
assistance (Button et al., 2014). In order to address this multiplicity of reporting options,
the present study will also focus on the reporting of cybercrime victimization to other
organizations than the police.
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