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

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.