This project aims to improve how vulnerability is defined, and ultimately how police engage with victims and potential victims of romance fraud.
This interdisciplinary project will critically investigate vulnerability to romance fraud using quantitative statistical modelling methods. The project aims to improve how vulnerability is defined, and ultimately how police engage with victims and potential victims. The project team will work with those who have experienced romance fraud, autistic stakeholders, and police practitioners to achieve this.
Over £100 million was lost to romance fraud in the UK in 2024, with fraud and cybercrime now the most likely type of crime for a person to experience. In addition, victims of romance fraud suffer what is known as a “double hit”: losing money as well as a valued relationship. This leads to emotional distress and long-term effects on mental health and wellbeing.
Reports from practitioners suggest that prevention and intervention communication is not always effective, particularly for autistic people. National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) data indicates that many victims request additional support from the police, but it doesn’t record why additional support is requested. Existing research tells us that vulnerability is not well understood by those investigating fraud offences.
So, research is needed to identify if specific groups are more vulnerable to romance fraud and potentially underserved by current policing practice.
The project aims to critically investigate vulnerability to romance fraud by identifying both risk factors and factors that help prevent victimisation. It will do this using an experimental design that combines demographic, psychological, and behavioural data.
Anyone can be a victim of romance fraud. Rather than using vulnerability as a static label applied to specific groups (e.g., autistic people, the elderly), this project conceptualises it as dynamic, trait-based, and context-dependent and seek to test this experimentally. The research team will investigate specific variables potentially predictive of greater risk of victimisation (e.g., differences in social cognition, social isolation, impulsivity) as well as potential protective factors (e.g., resistance to change, preferring to have a clear plan before acting), recognising that traits associated with autism fall into both categories.
The team hopes to use this information to improve the prevention and support tools used by the police with victims and potential victims of romance fraud.
The project is being co-designed with police practitioners, people with lived experiences of romance fraud and lived experience of autism. Methodologically, the team are using a quantitative experimental design within a participatory action research framework.
This involves conducting a series of participatory focus groups with autistic adults and people who have experienced romance fraud, as well as a practitioner survey targeted at frontline officers. This will inform a large-scale experimental study that simulates real-world, online romance fraud. It will investigate what traits or collection of traits are predictive of whether and how people engage with potential romance fraud communications. The variables in this study will come from prior research (e.g., impulsivity, age, levels of romantic beliefs) as well as the results of the project team’s focus groups and survey.
Participatory focus groups will continue throughout the project, guiding the analysis and interpretation of the experimental data and the development of guidance for fraud prevention officers.
Lead investigator
- Dr Jo Kenrick (University of Greenwich)
Co-investigators
- Dr Jumana Ahmed (University of Greenwich)
- Dr Erika Kalocsanyiova (University of Greenwich)
- Dr Elisabeth Carter (Kingston University)
- Professor Mark Brosnan (University of Bath)
- Dr Jeff Gavin (University of Bath)
The project team is also working working alongside colleagues in both Kent and Essex police forces.
