Psychological Processes of Telecommunications Fraud: Development of a Three-Stage Framework and Cross-Sectional Quantitative Elaboration in a Mixed Methods Study.

BACKGROUND: Telecommunications fraud causes financial and psychological harm, yet how individuals who experienced fraud retrospectively describe progression from initial trust to emotional escalation and reduced behavioral control remains unclear.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop a stage-based psychological framework for telecommunications fraud and examine whether person-level cross-sectional associations provide quantitative elaboration.

METHODS: Study 1 used grounded-theory analysis of semistructured interviews with 71 individuals who experienced telecommunications fraud; 46 interviews informed model development and 25 assessed theoretical saturation. Study 2 analyzed 4722 university-based survey responses from Chongqing, including 409 students with confirmed fraud experience. A balanced case-control sample comprised all 409 participants with confirmed fraud experience and 409 randomly selected participants without reported fraud experience. Two-tailed independent-samples t tests, adjusted logistic regression, and 10 nonoverlapping resampling iterations examined correlates of victimization. Among defrauded people, 2 theory-specified PROCESS Model 6 analyses with 5000 bootstrap resamples estimated cross-sectional indirect associations involving Truth-Seeking or Cognitive Maturity, Gullibility, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation, and Brief Self-Control Scale (BSCS) scores.

RESULTS: Study 1 yielded a 3-stage interpretive framework of retrospective narratives: Credulity Priming, Affective Manipulation, and Behavioral Dyscontrol. Desire and fear loops, as well as overexpectation events, were characterized by a narrated escalation. In study 2, defrauded people had lower Truth-Seeking and Cognitive Maturity and higher Gullibility, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation, and BSCS scores (indicating poorer self-control) than sampled nondefrauded people. In adjusted analyses, higher Gullibility was associated with higher odds of victimization, whereas higher Truth-Seeking was associated with lower odds; the interpretation of these adjusted correlates was based primarily on their consistent reproduction in the student-only sensitivity models. Among defrauded people, both PROCESS models yielded statistically significant model-specified cross-sectional indirect association estimates, but concurrent postevent measurement precluded temporal or causal inference. Across studies, convergence was the strongest for trust-related appraisal; evidence for affective and behavioral domains was complementary rather than confirmatory.

CONCLUSIONS: Retrospective narratives supported a 3-stage interpretive framework, while cross-sectional quantitative findings most consistently linked lower Truth-Seeking and higher Gullibility to victimization status in this sample. These findings motivate prospective evaluation of stage-sensitive prevention strategies; the proposed temporal sequence and intervention implications require direct testing in more diverse populations.