 Can educational interventions reduce susceptibility to financial fraud?Jeremy Burke, Christine Kieffer, Gary Mottola and Francisco Perez-Arce Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 198, issue C, 250-266 Abstract: Financial fraud is pervasive and can be devastating for its victims. While there are numerous campaigns designed to warn and educate consumers about financial fraud, there is very little evidence on whether these initiatives are effective at reducing susceptibility to scams. We conduct a survey experiment among a representative sample of U.S. adults and find that short, online educational interventions can meaningfully reduce fraud susceptibility, and that effects persist for at least three months if, and only if, a reminder is provided. Investigating mechanisms, we find no evidence that the educational intervention reduced willingness to invest generally, but rather increased knowledge which participants were able to selectively apply. We find some evidence that beneficial effects are concentrated among individuals who are more likely to invest, particularly the financially sophisticated. Our results indicate that brief financial education interventions can meaningfully reduce susceptibility to financial fraud. Date: 2022 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:198:y:2022:i:c:p:250-266 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.03.028 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.