Background: India as a major user of digital space has witnessed a rise in different variety of cybercrimes. One such type of crime is Digital Arrest, in which, an individual with criminal intent impersonates as a law enforcement personnel, and uses the fake authority to steal the victim's sensitive data, like identificaton number, bank details etc. Digital arrest focuses more on fears like getting arrested or getting warrent. Effectiveness of these crimes depends on poor human judegment, and improved understanding of major psychological factors, can help us understand why many individual's fall victims to such crimes.
Methods: The present research aims to understand how different psychological factors can determine our chances of falling victim or in detection of such crimes. The present research uses measures of life-satisfaction, self-efficacy, burnout and well-being to understanding the psychological states. Two types of tasks were given to participants to collect data on fake call detection/ identification. Tasks include 10 stimuli both visual and auditory (N=73). The data was collected in lab to ensure controlled set up and avoid distraction from other stimulus.
Findings: We analysed our data using ordinal logistic regression to determine which psychological factor predicts the identification of potential threat or behaviour to fall victim in such cyber cases. Our findings indicated that all variables showed a significant relationship with each other.
Conclusion: The major implication of our study is to assess and understand the significance of selected constructs in predicting behaviour connected to such crimes. We also explored how this result can play a vital role in further developing applications in form of an awareness programs or measures, which can be utilized in different social contexts. Our research aligns with sustainable development goals (SDG 3, SDG 4, SDG 16) that can be used for social and economic development.