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The authors provide an example of a group of online shoppers exploiting a pricing mistake and exploring the drivers of predatory shopping that may harm online retailers. This paper aims to examine the role of social vigilantism, proactivity and self-presentation in driving individual predatory shopping behaviors and delivers a broader understanding of how these behaviors develop in online communities.

The authors use a mixed-methods sequential research model. In Study 1, the authors explore predatory shopping by using a netnographic textual approach to analyze an online forum engaging in predatory shopping. In Study 2, the authors empirically analyze the uncovered conceptual findings using the PROCESS macro.

Customers who engage in predatory shopping online exhibit social vigilantism when communicating their views to others and proactively seeking out pricing mistakes and opportunities. Customers engaging in predatory shopping adapt their presentation online to increase their chances of success; this effect is strengthened by the online disinhibition effect.

Predatory shoppers can actively seek out pricing mistakes online, encourage participation and exploit mistakes by adapting their self-presentation. Therefore, online retailers should be proactive and consistent when communicating with customers and collaborating to deter predatory shopping. In addition, online retailers should focus on building advocates in communities to prevent harm from predatory shoppers online.

Online predatory shopping is explored qualitatively and quantitatively to understand the propensities that can drive predatory behavior and provide warning signs for online retailers. In addition, the effects of predatory shopping drivers are analyzed in the presence of the online disinhibition effect.

The purpose of this paper is to examine informal social control, vigilantism, and bystander intervention with reference to the Real-Life Superhero (RLSH) movement/community.

This is a qualitative case study in which an in-depth semi-structured interview was conducted with a member of the RLSH community.

This paper conceptualises RLSH activity as a novel approach to informal social control and bystander intervention, whilst revealing the inaccuracy of the media-imposed “vigilante” stigma attributed to RLSHs.

Clarifying the goals and methods of RLSHs as striving to be pro-social and law-abiding in nature creates an avenue for dialogue between RLSHs and local justice agencies to establish a working partnership for community safety, thereby mediating interactions between informal and formal agents of social control.

Justice agencies to engage with all individuals and groups who are performing community safety/crime prevention functions in a more effective and inclusive way. To ensure formal and informal mechanisms of social control, and the wider community, recognise, and legitimise the RLSH movement in community safety policy and practice. Reconsider the use of the term “vigilantism” and how it is it applied to individuals and community groups involved in community safety policy and practice. This case study presents a unique approach to community safety and crime prevention that can be extended within this public safety philosophy and practice.

This study is a contribution to a small but growing body of research concerning the RLSH movement/community.

This paper aims to examine the online communications, symbolism and imagery of 35 community crime prevention and crime watch groups across Canada to explore how these groups organize themselves and assess the resulting community actions.

Contributing to digital criminology, gathering data from open access platforms such as Facebook and online platforms such as websites, the authors analyse communications from community crime prevention and crime watch groups in 12 Canadian cities. The authors used qualitative content analysis to explore the types of posts to assess trends and patterns in types of ideas communicated and symbolized.

Whilst such groups bring the community together to help promote community safety, the groups may also encourage stereotyping, shaming and even vigilantism through misrepresenting the amount of crime occurring in the community and focusing on fear. The authors demonstrate how crime prevention becomes sidelined amongst most of the groups, and how intense crime reporting and the focus on fear derail actual community development.

The current study is limited to two years of posts from each group under examination. Interviews with members of online community crime prevention and crime watch groups would provide insights into the lived experience of regular users and their reasons for interacting with the group.

Given some of the vigilante-style the actions of such groups, the authors would suggest these groups pose a governance problem for local governments.

Community crime prevention and crime watch groups are not a new phenomenon, but their activities are moving online in ways that deserve criminological research. The authors contribute to the field of digital criminology by researching how online communications shape community crime prevention organizations and how ideas about regulation of crime and social control circulate online. The authors also explain how this community crime prevention trend may contribute to issues of vigilantism and increased transgression.

Social media is replete with malicious and unempathetic rhetoric yet few studies explain why these emotions are publicly dispersed. The purpose of the study is to investigate how the intergroup counter-empathic response called schadenfreude originates and how it prompts media consumption and engagement.

The study consists of two field surveys of 635 in-group members of two professional sports teams and 300 residents of California and Texas with political party affiliations. The analysis uses SEM quantitative methods.

Domain passion and group identification together determine the harmonious/obsessive tendencies of passion for an activity and explain the schadenfreude response toward the rival out-group. Group identification is a stronger driver of obsessive passion compared to harmonious passion. Schadenfreude directly influences the use of traditional media (TV, radio, domain websites), it triggers social media engagement (posting), and it accelerates harmonious passion's effects on social media posting.

The study is limited by the groups used to evaluate the research model, sports, and politics.

The more highly identified and passionate group members experience greater counter-empathy toward a rival. At extreme levels of group identification, obsessive passion increases at an increasing rate and may characterize extremism. Harboring feelings of schadenfreude toward the out-group prompts those with harmonious passion for an activity to more frequently engage on social media in unempathetic ways.

This study links the unempathetic, yet common emotion of schadenfreude with passion, intergroup dynamics, and media behavior.

The purpose of the paper is to explore, in broad terms, how policing needs to be developed in communities today.

The approach is normative and analytical, considering the meaning of policing in general, and community policing in particular, and specifying the criteria that such policing has to satisfy in order to be fair and effective in contemporary society.

A concept of public self‐policing is developed and community policing is then evaluated in the light of this concept. Police officers are understood as street‐level bureaucrats, with multiple accountabilities. The ideal relationship between police and public is characterised as a structural coupling between two types of self‐organising system.

The paper has implications for how policing organisations and governments might develop improved policing strategies in the future.

The paper provides a clear, logical summary of thinking about the role of policing, particularly community policing, in today's society. It offers a novel concept of public self‐policing, leading to a new approach to the evaluation of the work of policing organisations.

In Nigeria, vigilantism appears to be a common response to dissatisfaction about the state police in the recent time. Using survey data of residents in Lagos, Nigeria, the purpose of this paper, therefore, is to explore whether what is already known about perceptions of procedural (in) justice of state police also applies to self-help security groups in Nigeria. This is with a view to influencing community support for and satisfaction with non-state policing in the country.

The study adopted a case study approach. Lagos, Nigeria was stratified into the high, medium and low densities. Systematic sampling technique was used in selecting 1 out of every 20 buildings (5 percent) in each area. Household representative person on each floor of the selected building who had contact with vigilante corps in the last 12 months were targeted. Of 768 copies of questionnaires administered, a sample of 386 was effectively returned (representing 50 percent response rate). Six categories of variables were analyzed. These are procedural justice, distributive justice, vigilante corps’ performance, legitimacy, residents’ satisfaction with vigilante corps activities and socio-economic characteristics.

Results reveal that respondents are not primarily instrumental in their support for vigilantisms. Instead, their support is associated with their basic communal values. More than effectiveness in controlling crime, vigilantisms receive community support provided they use procedural justice in dealings with the public. Respondents who perceive vigilantisms use procedural justice also view them as legitimate, and as well satisfy with their activities and services. Besides, results show that support for and satisfaction with vigilantisms are associated with environmental, social and economic characteristics of the residents in the community they serve. The thesis supported in this research paper is that public support for and satisfaction with vigilantisms can be influenced significantly through policing strategies that builds legitimacy.

Vigilantism pervades contemporary policing strategies. It is supported by national crime prevention policies, according to the logic that the use of community self-help security strategies could contribute to sustainable crime prevention. This study extends research on legitimacy, with an empirical focus on Nigerian vigilantism. Understanding factors that shape public support for vigilantism may enhance safer communities.

In this chapter, the authors adopt a macrofoundations perspective to explore punishment within institutional theory. Institutional theorists have long focused on a single type of punishment – retribution – including the use of sanctions, fines, and incarceration to maintain conformity. The authors expand the types of punishment that work to uphold institutions, organized by visible and hidden, and formal and informal characteristics. The four types of punishment include (1) punishment-as-retribution; (2) punishment-as-charivari; (3) punishment-as-rehabilitation; and (4) punishment-as-vigilantism. The authors develop important connections between punishment-as-charivari, which relies on shaming efforts, and burgeoning interest in organizational stigma and social evaluations. The authors also point to informal types of punishment, including punishment-as-vigilantism, to expand the variety of actors that punish wrongdoing, including actors without the legal authority to do so. Finally, the authors detail a number of questions for each type of punishment as a means to generate a future research agenda.