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The management of consumer privacy has become a critical concern for organizations in the age of artificial intelligence–powered marketing. The impact of data on the market environment has brought both benefits and challenges, with marketers gaining valuable insights but also raising privacy concerns. As artificial intelligence–powered marketing advances, consumer vulnerability increases due to the sensitivity of collected data. This vulnerability leads some consumers to resort to falsifying information, posing a significant threat to the digital economy. Privacy empowerment and customer control play a vital role in addressing these challenges. This chapter explores the influencing factors and ethical considerations surrounding data falsification. It also discusses strategies to mitigate perceived vulnerability through privacy controls and explores the consequences of data breaches and customer vulnerability. The chapter further emphasizes the need for organizations to balance benefits, risks, and customer trust while harnessing the value of customer data. An ethical framework for data privacy marketing audits is proposed to help organizations assess their data practices responsibly and competitively. By integrating personal data protection strategies within an ethical framework, organizations can protect consumer privacy, enhance customer trust, and maintain their competitive edge in the market.

Nucleic acid testing is an effective method of accurate prevention and control and a key measure to block the spread of the epidemic. However, the fraud in nucleic acid testing occurred frequently during epidemics. This paper aims to provide a viable scheme for the government to strengthen the supervision of nucleic acid testing and to provide a new condition for the punishment for the negative act of the government and the upper limit of the reward for nucleic acid testing institution of no data fraud.

This paper formulates an evolutionary game model between the government and nucleic acid testing institution under four different mechanisms of reward and punishment to solve the issue of nucleic acid testing supervision. The authors discuss the stability of equilibrium points under the four distinct strategies and conduct simulation experiments.

The authors find that the strategy of dynamic reward and static penalty outperforms the strategies of static reward and static penalty, dynamic reward and static penalty, static reward and dynamic penalty, dynamic reward and dynamic penalty. The results reveal the appropriate punishment for the negative act of the government can enhance the positivity of the government's supervision in the strategy of dynamic reward and static penalty, while the upper limit of the reward for nucleic acid testing institution of no data fraud cannot be too high. Otherwise, it will backfire. Another interesting and counterintuitive result is that in the strategy of dynamic reward and dynamic penalty, the upper limit of the penalty for data fraud of nucleic acid testing institution cannot be augmented recklessly. Otherwise, it will diminish the government's positivity for supervision.

Most of the existing evolutionary game researches related to the reward and punishment mechanism and data fraud merely highlight that increasing the intensity of reward and punishment can help improve the government's supervision initiative and can minimize data fraud of nucleic acid institution, but they fall short of the boundary conditions for the punishment and reward mechanism. Previous literature only study the supervision of nucleic acid testing qualitatively and lacks quantitative research. Moreover, they do not depict the problem scenario of testing data fraud of nucleic acid institution regulated by the government via the evolutionary game model. Thus, this study effectively bridges these gaps. This research is universal and can be extended to other industries.

Fabricated data jeopardize the reliability of large-scale population surveys and reduce the comparability of such efforts by destroying the linkage between data and measurement constructs. Such data result in the loss of comparability across participating countries and, in the case of cyclical surveys, between past and present surveys. This paper aims to describe how data fabrication can be understood in the context of the complex processes involved in the collection, handling, submission and analysis of large-scale assessment data. The actors involved in those processes, and their possible motivations for data fabrication, are also elaborated.

Computer-based assessments produce new types of information that enable us to detect the possibility of data fabrication, and therefore the need for further investigation and analysis. The paper presents three examples that illustrate how data fabrication was identified and documented in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and discusses the resulting remediation efforts.

For two countries that participated in the first round of PIAAC, the data showed a subset of interviewers who handled many more cases than others. In Case 1, the average proficiency for respondents in those interviewers’ caseloads was much higher than expected and included many duplicate response patterns. In Case 2, anomalous response patterns were identified. Case 3 presents findings based on data analyses for one PISA country, where results for human-coded responses were shown to be highly inflated compared to past results.

This paper shows how new sources of data, such as timing information collected in computer-based assessments, can be combined with other traditional sources to detect fabrication.

Evidence from past surveys suggests that some interviewees simplify their responses even in very well-organized and highly respected surveys. This paper aims to demonstrate that some interviewers, too, simplify their task by at least partly fabricating their data, and that, in some survey research institutes, employees simplify their task by fabricating entire interviews via copy and paste.

Using data from the principal questionnaires in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data, the author applies statistical methods to search for fraudulent methods used by interviewers and employees at survey research organizations.

The author provides empirical evidence for potential fraud performed by interviewers and employees of survey research organizations in several countries that participated in PISA 2012 and PIAAC.

The proposed methods can be used as early as the initial phase of fieldwork to flag potentially problematic interviewer behavior such as copying responses.

The proposed methodology may help to improve data quality in survey research by detecting fabricated data.

Despite lessons learned from prior disaster relief funding programs, billions of dollars in fraudulent loans were issued by the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) during the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA. The misuse of funds prevented business owners and their employees who are in true financial need from accessing program funds. The purpose of this paper is to identify techniques perpetrators used to obtain funds from the program illegally since its inception in March 2020 and concludes with suggestions on internal controls to reduce fraud occurrences in future relief packages.

The authors analyze 106 loan fraud cases reported by the US Department of Justice and compiled by the Project on Government Oversight to examine methods individuals used to illegally obtain funds from the program. The authors complement the data with lender characteristics from Call Reports and Business Insights. They further compare the fraud sample to the entire population of PPP loans, which is available on the US Small Business Administration website. The authors report descriptive statistics, correlations and multivariate regressions.

The authors find that most fraud cases falsify tax data to access program loans and inflate payroll numbers to obtain larger loan amounts. Applicants who sought large amounts applied using multiple companies and across multiple lenders, consistent with the use of multiple loans to avoid the scrutiny of a single large loan with a single lender. The authors find that cases with larger amounts relied on less regulated lenders, such as lending companies, rather than more regulated lenders.

The PPP is part of the largest ever US stimulus in which the private sector allocated funds. This study provides novel evidence of how fraudsters adapted to the program's rules to defraud the government.

Unlike quantitative studies, interview data generally cannot be validated; yet, they are typically the only evidence of the research. This study develops protocols for using verbatim interview quotations in research and for assessing the quality of interview quotations.

This research reviews 20 empirical papers using in-depth interviews containing 600 interview quotations to examine authors' approaches to verbatim interviewee quotations. The research analyses the sample papers for interview transcript handling, selection of quotations, the number and length of interview quotations, how they are placed and presented, the proportion of interviewee voices reproduced in quotations and the disclosure of protocols for translating and editing quotations. This paper includes illustrative interview quotations as exemplars of best practice.

Given the modest discussion of the principles influencing the reproduction of quotations in research, this study develops a framework for evaluating prior research. Researchers use a wide variety of practices to reproduce interview quotations in accounting research. The issues derived from this review, and their application to interview-based papers, frame an argument for a general set of quality criteria and protocols rather than rigid rules for assessing qualitative work. These criteria can serve as anchor points for qualitative evaluation.

There is little guidance on the use of interview quotations in qualitative research which this study bridges.

Explores recent developments in MIS, discusses the literature relating to evaluation of MIS, and produces a list of possible objectives and key questions to assist in the evaluation and audit of MIS. Focuses on audit objectives relevant to assessing an MIS. Aims to stimulate debate among internal audit professionals on the audit of MIS, in the hope that the involvement of internal auditors in this area will lead to the bridging of the gap between what users want from systems and what information systems designers think are user requirements.

Purpose: In the early 2010s, Japanese society recognized and experienced a panic about increasing infertility and people’s lack of knowledge about human reproduction. This chapter focuses on several graphs that misrepresented or distorted scientific findings that were used in the campaign related to this panic and explores (1) how the graphs were made, used, and authorized, and (2) how they contributed to changes in discourses and policies.

Methodology/approach: Literature survey.

Findings: (1) The graphs were made in the field of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive medicine by questionable methods, including falsifying, trimming, and misunderstanding of data. (2) Researchers in the field of fertility study relied on secondary and tertiary sources thus ignoring and compounding errors. (3) Such inauthentic research was approved and politically mobilized by professional organizations, rather than being penalized or criticized. (4) Discourse based on such unscientific knowledge may have encouraged a pronatalist policy of promoting early marriage and education about human fertility and life planning, targeted at teenage girls.

Research limitations/implications: Any society suffering from a low birthrate can experience similar phenomena. This study focuses on Japan, but it has wider implications about how low integrity and quality of the presentation of medical research can cause these issues elsewhere in the world.

Social implications: This chapter includes a warning against biological explanations that contain unscientific connotations about gender.

Originality/value of study: This study confirms how gender-related policy in 2010s Japan was influenced by science that lacked research integrity and was of sub-standard quality.

Based on this holistic model, the authors propose and analyze seven key issues related to the admissibility of digital media in cross-border trials considering four Latin American countries.

The authors apply the modeling process of the soft systems methodology by Checkland in order to develop a holistic model focused on human situation problems involving digital media and information technology devices or systems.

The authors discuss the status of the identified key issues in each country and offer a perspective on the integration of cross-border work analyzing the contribution of these key issues to the collaboration between countries criminal cases or the use of foreign digital artifacts in domestic trials.

In this study, the authors assumed that the problems of official interaction between agencies of different countries are considered solved. However, for future studies or research, the authors recommend that these issues can be considered as relevant, since they are related to cross-border cooperation topics that will necessarily require unavoidable official arrangements, agreements and formalities.

This work is aimed at defining and analyzing the key issues that can contribute to the application of current techniques and methodologies in digital forensics as a tool to support the legal framework of each country, considering cross-border trials. Finally, the authors highlight the implications of this study lie in the identification and analysis of the key issues that must be considered for digital forensics as a support tool for the admissibility of digital evidence in cross-border trials.

The authors consider that digital forensic will have high demand in cross-border trials, and it will depend on the people mobility between the countries considered in this study.

This paper shows that the soft systems methodology allows elaborating a holistic model focused on social problems involving digital media and informatics devices.