Consumer vulnerability to scams, swindles, and fraud: A new theory of visceral influences on persuasion

Seams exact a huge toll on consumers and society at large, with annual costs in the United States alone exceeding $100 billion. The global proliferation of the Internet has enabled con artists to export their craft to a rapidly expanding market and reach previously untapped consumers. In spite of the prevalence of seams around the world, there has been virtually no academic attention devoted to understanding the factors that might account for why individuals differ in their scamming vulnerability. Building on the background of elder consumer disadvantage and informed by the authors' own survey of expert opinion, this article presents a tentative theory of scamming vulnerability. The proposed theory incorporates the effects of visceral influences on consumer response to seam offers and hypothesizes a role for various moderating factors such as self-control, gullibility, susceptibility to interpersonal influence, and seam knowledge. Theoretical propositions are provided for future empirical investigation. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.