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The Unpreventable Emotional Telecom Fraud —— "Pig-Butchering Scam"

Hao-Nan Jiang ; Chao-Hui Wang ; Zhi-Zhuang Duan (2023) — Scholars Bulletin

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DOI: 10.36348/sb.2023.v09i01.001 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   China
Tags:   AI-Enabled Fraud, China, Cross Cultural, Measurement, Online Dating, Pig Butchering, Psychology, Romance Scams, Self Esteem, Telecom Fraud, Victim Experience, Victim Susceptibility
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Synopsis

            
The body of fraud literature documents a shift from traditional offline schemes to online telecom-based deception, with pig-butchering scams emerging as a notable example. This form has been highlighted as one of the ten most prevalent fraud crimes by China’s National Anti-Fraud Center in February 2021. The study centers on victims of pig-butchering scams, with the objective of uncovering shared vulnerability traits and potential victimization factors, and of examining how to interrupt the progression from perceived susceptibility to actual fraudulent behavior through targeted interventions. By doing so, the research aims to refine the psychological induction framework that underpins emotion-driven telecom fraud. Methodologically, the researchers conducted field surveys and semi-structured interviews to explore victims’ personalities and to identify commonalities across cases. The analysis seeks to distill characteristic patterns that recur among victims, providing a basis for understanding how susceptibility translates into real-world engagement with the scam. The study emphasizes the role of personality in shaping vulnerability to emotionally charged, telecommunication-based fraud. Empirical findings aligned with the researchers’ initial hypotheses: a large share of victims exhibited a tendency toward low self-identity within the broader self-esteem domain, with particular weakness observed in interpersonal-social self-esteem. This pattern suggests that individuals who perceive themselves as having limited self-worth, especially in social and interpersonal contexts, are more likely to become potential targets of the pig-butchering scam. The results point to the relevance of self-esteem as a mediating factor in susceptibility and underscore the potential value of interventions that bolster interpersonal self-concept as a means of reducing exposure to emotion-based telecom fraud.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper identifies a shortage of victim-focused research: domestic work largely concerns public-security investigation and prevention, while theoretical work is described as local and mostly perpetrator-focused. It also notes uncertainty over whether victims’ observed self-denial and self-depreciation were caused by the fraud experience, limiting conclusions about pre-existing personality traits.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
The study used an empirical qualitative approach. Authors retrieved about 100 real pig-butchering cases, conducted field surveys with 40 victims, and used semi-structured interviews to examine personality characteristics and potential susceptibility factors. They inductively identified low self-identity/self-esteem, especially interpersonal-social self-esteem, as a common tendency, while proposing later quantitative scale testing to verify this hypothesis.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The sample’s personality traits were not highly uniform: victims ranged from cheerful and extroverted to reserved and introverted. The authors explicitly state that they do not know whether fraud experience produced the observed stress, self-denial, and self-depreciation. Thus, the study cannot establish whether low self-esteem preceded victimization or resulted from it; its proposed susceptibility explanation remains preliminary pending quantitative verification.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Conduct quantitative scale-based testing to determine whether low self-esteem is a susceptibility factor. The authors also invite further research and exploration of pig-butchering-related issues, particularly to deepen victim-focused theoretical and practical understanding.

          

              

    
    

        
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