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This study aims to develop a unified theoretical framework that presents a cohesive picture of workplace cyberbullying to better understand the interplay between cyberbullying, its effects on organizations and organizational controls enacted to contain these effects.

The study conducts a theoretical review of the workplace cyberbullying literature between 2005 and 2021 drawing upon existing literature and two important theories, the routine activities theory and control theory. The final sample of 54 empirical papers represents a comprehensive body of literature on cyberbullying published across various disciplines.

A theoretical model of workplace cyberbullying is developed, which highlights major antecedents to workplace cyberbullying and its impact on individual employees as well as organizations.

As firms increasingly rely on information and communication technologies (ICTs), the misuse of ICTs in the form of cyberbullying is also increasing. Workplace cyberbullying severely hurts an organization’s employees and compromises the efficacy of its information systems. Fortunately, various controls can be utilized by firms to minimize workplace cyberbullying and its attendant costs. In all, eleven propositions are offered, providing a robust agenda for future research. The authors also offer insights for practitioners on how to minimize cyberbullying in the workplace and its damaging effects.

Today’s world of digital and mobile media does not require actual physical contact, between the suitable target and the motivated offender, as with traditional crime. In fact, as Mesch (2009) contended that the internet is not merely an information channel but it creates a new space of activities for children, where they are exposed to motivated offenders and the actors of fourth party. Therefore, for the sake of children’s safety, the practice of parental mediation control is increasingly becoming more pertinent everyday. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine how parental mediation control in Sri Lanka is influenced by their internet self-efficacy, their experience as online victims and their trust in online users.

This paper uses a unique data set of computer and internet users from Sir Lanka to examine parental intervention in their children’s online activities. Specifically, the data set contains 347 responses from computer and internet users. To analyze the data, the authors use a binary dependent (probit) model.

The results show that such factors alter the baseline probability of parental intervention. However, some differences are found between younger and older parents, with the latter group responding more to trust in online users and victimization experience while the former is mainly driven from computer self-efficacy. In particular, the older group is less likely to trust online internet users in terms of never adding unknown persons in the social media. Finally, being self-employed and an older parent has a positive effect on the likelihood of adopting parental controls, possibly because of the non-pecuniary attributes of self-employment.

This study adds to the emerging parental mediation control literature by looking at the likelihood of younger and older parents who were victims of cybercrimes, who have greater internet self-efficacy and lower online third-party trust to adopt parental mediation control behaviors. Also another contribution to the literature is the role of occupation type on parental monitoring behaviors.

This study aims to use opportunity as a theoretical lens to investigate how the spatio-temporal and social dimensions of the consumption environment create perceived opportunities for consumers to misbehave.

Drawing on routine activity theory and social impact theory, the authors use two experiments to demonstrate that spatio-temporal and social dimensions can explain consumer theft in retail settings.

Study 1 reveals mixed empirical support for the basic dimensions of routine activity theory, which posits that the opportunity to thieve is optimised when a motivated offender, suitable target and the absence of a capable formal guardian transpire in time and space. Extending the notion of guardianship, Study 2 tests social impact theory and shows that informal guardianship impacts the likelihood of theft under optimal routine activity conditions.

The study findings highlight important implications for academicians and retail managers: rather than focusing on the uncontrollable characteristics of thieving offenders, more controllable spatio-temporal and social factors of the retail environment can be actively monitored and manipulated to reduce perceived opportunities for consumer misbehaviour.

This paper aims to examine demographic differences between individuals who do not take measures to protect themselves from identity theft victimization and those who do. A majority of the research on identity theft has focused on predictors of victimization, reporting behaviors of the victims and their health and mental outcomes. However, little remains known about the individuals who choose to take any identity-theft measures despite concerns over this fast-growing breed of crime.

Guided by Felson and Cohen’s routine activities theoretical framework (1979), this study uses the 2014 Identity Theft Supplement of the National Crime Victimization Survey to identify the demographic characteristics that influence the use of self-protection measures among individuals in the general population.

This study finds that these individuals are much more likely to be white, older, female and highly educated. The decision to undertake protection against identity theft is also influenced by the following factors: prior experience of misuse, possession of a bank account in the prior 12 months, current possession of at least one credit card and awareness that one is entitled to a free copy of one’s credit report.

This study addresses the gap in scholarship on identity theft prevention by applying the concept of guardianship in Cohen and Felson’s routine activity theory (1979) to the usage of self-protection measures in a general population. Future findings will identify the areas which agencies and researchers can focus on to inform policies that foster individuals’ own initiatives to take self-protection measures against potential identity theft.

The purpose of this research is to understand whether service robots can safeguard servicescapes from deviant consumer behaviour. Using routine activity theory, this research examines whether increasing the perceived humanness of service robots reduces customer intentions to commit deviant consumer behaviour and whether this negative relationship is mediated by perceived empathy and perceived risk of being caught.

Five hundred and fifty-three US residents responded to a hypothetical scenario that manipulated the humanness of a service agent (from self-service technology, to robot, to human employee) across seven conditions and measured the likelihood of deviant consumer behaviour, empathy towards the service robot, perceived risk of being caught and punished and negative attitudes towards robots.

The results indicate that replacing human service agents with different types of service robots does inadvertently reduce customer perceptions of capable guardianship (i.e. the human element that deters potential offenders from committing crimes) in the servicescape and creates conditions that allow customers to perpetrate more deviant consumer behaviour.

When investing in technology such as service robots, service providers need to consider the unintended cost of customer misbehaviour (specifically deviant consumer behaviour) in their return-on-investment assessments to optimise their asset investment decisions.

Moving beyond research on customer adoption and use, this research examines the unintended consequences that might arise when deploying service robots in a technology-infused service environment. Humanised service robots offer more guardianship than self-service technology but do not replace human employees in preventing deviant consumer behaviour, as they remain more capable of deterring customer misbehaviour.

The purpose of this study was to explore human factors as the possible facilitator of cyber-dependent (hacking and malware infection) and cyber-enabled (phishing) crimes victimisation and to test the applicability of lifestyle routine activities theory (LRAT) to cybercrime victimisation.

A mixed methods research paradigm was applied to address the research questions and aims. The data set of Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) 2014/2015 and 42 semi-structured interviews conducted with victims of cybercrime and non-victim control group participants were analysed via binary logistic regression and content analyses methods.

This research illustrated that Internet users facilitated their victimisation through their online activities. Additionally, using insecure Internet connections and public access computers emerged as risk factors for both cyber-enabled and cyber-dependent crime victimisation. Voluntary and involuntary personal information disclosure through social networking sites and online advertisement websites increased the likelihood of being a target of phishing. Deviant online activities such as free streaming or peer-to-peer sharing emerged to increase the risk of cyber-dependent crime victimisation.

The binary logistic regression analysis results suggested LRAT as a more suitable theoretical framework for cyber-dependent crime victimisation. Future research may test this result with models including more macro variables.

Policymakers may consider implementing regulations regarding limiting the type of information required to login to free Wi-Fi connections. Checking trust signs and green padlocks may be effective safeguarding measures to lessen the adverse impacts of impulsive buying.

This study empirically illustrated that, besides individual-level factors, macro-level factors such as electronic devices being utilised to access the Internet and data breaches of large companies also increased the likelihood of becoming the victim of cyber-enabled and cyber-dependent crime.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how interactional justice within a retail context may influence employee organizational commitment and how this may evoke guardianship behaviors that manifest in shoplifting prevention.

This research uses a phenomenological approach conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews with 26 shop-floor employees of two major national supermarket chains in New Zealand.

The findings suggest that interactional justice in the workplace is important in shaping organizational commitment amongst employees. Additionally, heightened organizational commitment may have a significant effect on employee propensity to engage in shoplifting prevention/guardianship behavior. A conceptual model is developed based on these findings.

Retail managers may promote and exercise interactional justice practices with employees to improve their organizational commitment and consequential shoplifting prevention/guardianship behaviors.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, and from a theoretical perspective, it offers both a conceptual foundation and empirical-based evaluation of interactional justice and its effect on organizational commitment and, specifically, on guardianship/shoplifting prevention behaviors. Second, and from a pragmatic perspective, the conceptual model derived from this research may assist retailers in developing interactional justice strategies that encourage organizational commitment of employees that consequently leads to employees’ guardianship/shoplifting prevention behaviors. Finally, it explores significance and role of employee perceptions of interactional justice, employee workplace attachment and organizational commitment within the context of retail crime prevention.

As a well-known social institution, crime prevention has traditionally been in the purview of public authorities. However, the ceaseless increase in the use of online resources and governments’ responsibilisation approach to cybercrime prevention has created an ecosystem, which necessitates the empowerment of individuals. By introducing the concept of internal spheres of protection, the purpose of this paper is to show how traditionally public responsibilities require increased facilitation by individuals to adequately safeguard what they value.

This is a brief conceptual paper, which recasts the individual’s role in cybercrime prevention through a critique of the routine activity theory (Cohen and Felson, 1979) and explains how responsibilisation (Garland, 1996) has created an unavoidable need to provide individuals with the knowledge and tools required to avoid online victimisation.

In the context of cybercrime, criminological theories that are limited in considering the individual both as the target of crime and the person likeliest to prevent it are quickly becoming outdated. Public authorities either cannot intervene or are moving away from intervening on citizens’ behalf to effectively stymie the pressure from cybercriminals. Thus, there is a need of an approach that starts with individuals and their value-based motivations.

The concept of internal spheres of protection is a novel way of looking at cybercrime prevention. The internal spheres are based on individuals’ values, and the value of security in particular, and take cyber-knowledge as a point of departure towards safeguarding such values, i.e. through risk-decreasing actions and the use of relevant tools.

School resource officers (SROs) have become commonplace in schools across the USA. Although their visibility may allow them to function as capable guardians, little research has examined their impact on less serious but more common forms of school violence, like bullying. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the presence, quantity and roles of SROs and the frequency of bullying.

Data come from the nationally representative 2006 School Survey on Crime and Safety. The relationship between SROs and bullying, controlling for other guardians, motivated offenders and school characteristics, was assessed using ordered logistic regression. Separate models were estimated for middle and high schools.

There was no association between the presence, quantity or role of SROs and bullying in middle or high schools; however, teacher training was associated with less frequent bullying, especially in middle schools, and the presence of motivated offenders was associated with more frequent bullying.

Whether SROs reduce school violence is contested; this study found no association between SROs and bullying, a less serious but more common form of school violence. Future research should consider the roles of SROs in schools and the credibility of capable guardians.

The results caution against continuing to divert educational and social service resources to law enforcement in schools. Continued training for teachers may provide more effective guardianship against bullying.

This paper contributes to the developing literature on the effect of SROs on less serious but more common forms of school violence, like bullying.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of exposure to motivated offenders who may alter the vulnerability levels to phishing victimization. This is particularly focused on explaining the influences of individuals’ online lifestyles and attitudes toward information sharing online on phishing susceptibility.

This conceptual paper explores the risk of phishing victimization using criminological theories. The authors draw on empirical evidence from existing cybercrime literature and revisit routine activities theory (RAT) and lifestyle RAT (LRAT) to elucidate the risk of phishing victimization. This paper proposes that cyber-RAT, which was developed from RAT and LRAT, could interpret phishing victimization. Grounded on the intervention-based theory against cybercrime phishing, this study suggests that an attitude toward precautionary behavior (information sharing online) is essential to mitigate the phishing victimization risk.

This paper aims to provide a clear insight into the understanding of phishing victimization risk using theoretical and empirical evidence.

The theoretical perspective outlined provides the understanding of the impacts of online routine activities on a phishing attack which in turn will increase the awareness of phishing threats. The important role of the precautionary countermeasure, that is, attitudes toward information sharing online is highlighted to reconcile the phishing victimization risk.