Routine Activity Theory and the Determinants of High Cybercrime Countries

Abstract

Cybercrime and the threat it creates are growing in its reach, in accordance with similar growth in information technology. Some countries account for more of the variation in cybercrime activity than others, which affects less criminally involved nations as well, considering that cybercrime does not respect national borders over the Internet. Routine activity theory (RAT) has been used to explain cybercrime at the individual level, but not at the national level. Much research has focused on high cybercrime countries, but this research is often conducted by cybersecurity firms and is exclusively descriptive, making no inferences. This research sought to determine what characteristics predict whether a nation is high in either spamming activity or phishing activity. In a sample of 132 countries, it was found that wealthier nations with more Internet users per capita had higher cybercrime activity. Unemployment was also found to interact with Internet users such that the effect of the proportion of Internet users on spam was strongest in nations with higher unemployment. The implications these findings have for policy and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Website defacement and routine activities: considering the importance of hackers’ valuations of potential targets

“…Based on the premise that cyberspace is "anti-spatial" (Mitchell 1995, 8) and lacks temporal ordering, Yar (2005) argued that the "spatiotemporal ontologies" of virtual and non-virtual environments are distinctly different The authors attributed this finding to the increased visibility and accessibility of potential suitable targets. Similarly, Kigerl (2012) found that wealthier nations (as a result of target suitability) experience higher amounts of phishing and spam. Lastly, Holt and colleagues (2018) found that countries with greater technological infrastructure, more political freedom, and less organized crime are more likely to report malware infections.…”

“…Despite this underdevelopment, RAT is often regarded a general theory of crime (Ngo and Paternoster 2011), and it has been used to explain a host of victimization patterns in both the physical world (Cohen and Felson 1979) and in cyberspace (Maimon and Lounderback 2019), at both the macro- (Kigerl 2012) and individual-levels (Holt and Bossler 2013). However, the relevance of RAT to various forms of cybercrime has sparked a criminological debate.…”

Internet banking fraud alertness in the banking sector: South Africa

“…Cybercrime and the hazard it crafts are rising in its reach, in concurrence with comparable expansion in information technology (Kigerl, 2012). According to Wang (2010) web service technology is perfect for system assimilation at the enterprise level, and for sustaining business-to-business integration and application-to-application electronic commerce (ecommerce) in the large disseminated internet and intranet environment together with the banking sector.…”

Cybercrime

“…At present, most of the research on cybercrime focuses on the level of the individual by using self-report data. The research that considers how macrolevel social and economic forces may -differentially -increase the risk of victimization at a country or regional level is, however, minimal (e.g., Kigerl, 2012). Bossler and Holt, 2009;Higgins and Marcum, 2011;Holt and Bossler, 2014;Ngo and Patternoster, 2011).…”