The psychology of the internet fraud victimization of older adults: A systematic review

Public Health Challenges and Responses to the Growing Ageing Populations

Background

Human populations are rapidly ageing worldwide due to declining birth rates and rising life expectancies. This profound demographic shift presents complex public health challenges. Synthesizing evidence on key public health issues impacting ageing populations and policy strategies is required to address these needs.

Methods

The study employs narrative literature review based on the PubMed database. Data have been extracted on public health challenges to ageing populations and its recommended policy solutions.

Results

The key public health challenges identified include rising chronic disease burden, risks for preventable multi‐morbidities and co‐morbidities, disability and dependencies, mental health issues, caregiving gaps, long‐term care system deficiencies, health inequities, healthcare access barriers, end‐of‐life care needs, financial instability, ageism/elder abuse, adverse built environments, climate/disaster threats, and social isolation. Evidence‐based policy responses span interventions in healthcare, social services, urban planning, emergency preparedness, economics, technology, anti‐ageism advocacy and so on.

Conclusions

Proactively addressing the array of public health challenges faced by rapidly growing ageing populations globally requires implementing collaborative, multisectoral policy solutions focused on promoting healthy, equitable, and socially engaged ageing. Healthcare systems, communities, and policies must be optimized to meet the needs of elderly people and tap into their strengths.

Exploring the mechanisms driving elderly Fintech engagement: the role of social influence and the elderly's digital literacy

Objective

This study aims to investigate the elderly digital engagement (acceptance and utilization of technology), with a focus on the widespread application of financial technology: mobile banking (m-banking).

Methods

Guided by social influence theory, the research examines the various social dynamics that encourage elderly engagement with m-banking and the moderating effects of their digital literacy. Data was gathered online utilizing a disjunctive approach and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM).

Results

The study reveals that both word-of-mouths (WOMs) and peer engagement significantly influence the elderly's perceived usefulness of the platform, thereby influencing their m-banking engagement. Additionally, the level of digital literacy among older adults was found to impact their perceived usefulness of m-banking services. Interestingly, digital literacy among older adults negatively moderates the positive associations of WOMs and peer engagement on perceived usefulness.

Discussion

These insights advance our understanding of how social interactions can steer technological engagement, particularly for the silver generation with diverse levels of digital literacy. As society ages and becomes increasingly digitized, it is imperative to promote digital engagement among the elderly and foster a more inclusive digital environment.

Public perception on active aging after COVID-19: an unsupervised machine learning analysis of 44,343 posts

Introduction

To analyze public perceptions of active aging in China on mainstream social media platforms to determine whether the "14th Five Year Plan for the Development of the Aging Career and Older Adult Care System" issued by the CPC in 2022 has fully addressed public needs.

Methods

The original tweets posted on Weibo between January 1, 2020, and June 30, 2022, containing the words "aging" or "old age" were extracted. A bidirectional encoder representation from transformers (BERT)-based model was used to generate themes related to this perception. A qualitative thematic analysis and an independent review of the theme labels were conducted by the researchers.

Results

The findings indicate that public perceptions revolved around four themes: (1) health prevention and protection, (2) convenient living environments, (3) cognitive health and social integration, and (4) protecting the rights and interests of the older adult.

Discussion

Our study found that although the Plan aligns with most of these themes, it lacks clear planning for financial security and marital life.

Theoretical basis and occurrence of internet fraud victimisation: Based on two systems in decision-making and reasoning

The influencing factors of internet fraud, including demographics, psychology, experience and knowledge of susceptibility, have been widely studied. Research on the psychological mechanism of the victimisation process of internet fraud is relatively scarce but suggests a new research perspective. To summarise and unify the research in this field, this study systematically searched and analysed articles on the psychological decision-making mechanism of online fraud victims. We found that (a) previous researchers consistently believed that the heuristic processing mode was correlated with susceptibility to online fraud and that the systematic processing mode was helpful to detect and identify fraud. From the overall review results, we do not reject this conclusion, but the verification and intrinsic explanation of this relationship need to be further strengthened. (b) Under the heuristic-systematic model (HSM), with the exception of the trait of suspicion, there is no consensus on whether psychological factors (e.g., personality) influence the likelihood of online fraud through the mediating effect of the selection of the two systems. Objective knowledge and experience in specific fields have been found to be able to achieve this path. Information on the influential variables of equipment and habits is emerging, but how they affect network victimisation through the heuristic processing system needs to be further clarified. (c) The measurement of variables is conducted through simulation experiments. There may be a gap between the likelihood of internet fraud victimisation in the simulation experiment and in the real world. (d) The defence strategies under the HSM are intentional explorations, such as content-based cue recognition technology and simulated scene training.