Exploring the Role of Cognitive and Physical Limitations in Explaining Identity Theft Victimization

ABSTRACT

We use data from the 2018 Identity Theft Supplement of the U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey to examine the relationship between cognitive or physical limitations and identity theft victimization from a Routine Activities theory perspective. Using the binary logistic regression and multiple imputation technique for handling the missing data, we regressed several outcomes of identity theft victimization on cognitive or physical limitations while controlling for online and offline routines including protective strategies, individual characteristics, and previous victimization. We also tested whether age moderates the relationship between cognitive or physical limitations and victimization outcomes. The results suggest that the relationship between cognitive or physical limitations and victimization is generally significant and positive except for credit card victimization Our findings also revealed that some of these relationships are moderated by age.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity theft victimization
• cognitive or physical limitations
• routine activity
• previous victimization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Our weighted data analysis revealed that 69% of individuals with any disability and 76% of individuals without check their financial statements regularly. The percentages of persons who check their credit reports are 32% for individuals with any disabilities and 45% for others, respectively.

2. Further details on NSVS-ITS methods and the survey instruments can be found at https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/identity-theft-supplement-its. The dataset is available for download from the following link: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/37923.

3. See Deliema et al.’s (2021) paper as an example of reporting weighted descriptive statistics.

4. Appendix B displays information about the imputation process.

5. Our further analysis revealed a low tetrachoric correlation between previous ID theft and any identity theft (.21), and only 1.52% of previous ID thefts became a repeat identity theft victim (any of ID theft).

6. For victimization of other identity theft victimization, we also estimated firthlogit method (Coveney, 2021) to see if being a rare event would produce different estimates since only 1% of the sample is victimized (see King & Zeng, 2001 for more information about rare outcomes). However, the results from firthlogit generated the same significant results with the same coefficient signs.

7. We also ran the analysis without the imputations. The results of this analysis are presented in Appendix C. The results were largely similar to those with imputations with regards to the relationship between cognitive or physical limitations and victimization outcomes.

8. We also ran supplemental models testing additional interactions between cognitive or physical limitations and some other demographic variables, such as race/ethnicity, education, and gender, but we observed no significant interaction effects. Results available upon request.

9. OTP cards are small devices like smart cards or key fobs that utilize microprocessors. They generate a unique code consisting of numbers or letters, which is used to verify and authorize access to a system or transaction. This code is refreshed automatically every 30 or 60 seconds depending on its configuration.