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Online Romance Fraud as a Form of Emotional and Economic Partner Violence: A Social-Ecological Framework of Enabling Factors

Feng, Maja (2025) — Nordic Journal of Studies in Policing

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DOI: 10.18261/njsp.12.2.4 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   Norway
Tags:   AI Deepfakes, Coercive Control, Cyber Enabled Fraud, Nordic Context, Nordic Prevention, Norway, Prevention, Romance Scams, Routine Activity Theory, Social Ecological Framework, Trust, Victimization
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Synopsis

            
Online Romance Fraud as a Form of Emotional and Economic Partner Violence: A Social-Ecological Framework of Enabling Factors analyzes online romance fraud (ORF) as a hybrid of cyber-enabled financial crime and intimate partner violence dynamics. The study aims to describe ORF and identify enabling factors that contribute to susceptibility and victimization, with a focus on Nordic and Norwegian contexts. Guided by the social-ecological framework and routine activity theory, the author draws on scholarly and grey literature and employs a scoping-review approach, supplemented by additional searches. The analysis centers on 39 publications and presents a holistic framework intended to inform prevention, policing, and policy in multifaceted environments. At the core, ORF involves grooming and the development of trust within online relationships to extract financial and emotional gains from victims. The article notes that the phenomenon yields a “double hit” of financial loss and psychological harm, sometimes extending into identity and money-mule schemes. Enabling factors are mapped across levels: at the individual level, characteristics such as gender, age, socioeconomic status, and emotional vulnerabilities influence risk; at the micro level, relational behaviors mirror coercive control and forms of abuse seen in domestic violence and intimate partner violence. The discussion situates ORF within broader social, cultural, digital, and economic contexts, and draws parallels with tech-enabled abuse to argue for a comprehensive, multilevel prevention approach. The author advocates a holistic, social-ecological approach to crime prevention and policing, emphasizing collaboration across agencies and sectors, including financial institutions, to disrupt ORF at multiple levels. The Nordic context shapes the framing, with calls for stronger interorganisational cooperation and better policing knowledge of manipulation processes. The article positions ORF as a hybrid crime requiring empirically grounded, multilevel interventions and future research to refine enabling-factor pathways and preventive strategies.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper identifies a lack of holistic theoretical models for understanding ORF enabling factors. Research on ORF victim support groups is limited. Police knowledge and information about fraud in Norway are described as insufficient, impeding prevention. The proposed conceptual parallels between ORF, domestic violence, coercive control, and intimate partner violence require empirical investigation, while retaining conceptual specificity for prevention.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
Exploratory, theoretically guided literature analysis of scholarly and grey literature, rather than a systematic or scoping review. It used a pre-registered scoping-review search across academic and grey-literature databases, supplemented by snowballing, citation chaining, and ad hoc searches. The author screened and preliminarily coded 141 records from the first source and 31 from supplementary searches; 39 publications were included. Findings were thematically organised in NVivo and EndNote using social-ecological and routine activity theory frameworks.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The article explicitly presents an exploratory and extensive overview rather than a scoping or systematic review. Its included literature was selected for relevance to ORF susceptibility, victimisation, and victim–fraudster dynamics, with primary emphasis on victims rather than fraudster perspectives. Consequently, the framework is an initial, literature-based conceptualisation that the author says requires empirical investigation. Integrating concepts from ORF and abuse research may also reduce specificity and relevance for target groups if applied uncritically.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Empirically investigate the article’s initial conceptualisation of ORF and its proposed multilevel enabling factors. Examine temporal macro-structures that create conditions for cyber-enabled crime, and test how factors interact across individual, relational, institutional, societal, and global levels. Research should also assess the influence and impact of ORF victim support groups and support development of effective preventive interventions.

          

              

    
    

        
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