Grooming in online dating romance frauds and scams: A scoping review
Feng, Maja (2026) — Journal of Economic Criminology
Type:
Journal Article
Country:
Global
Synopsis (AI-Generated)
This scoping review catalogs scholarly work on grooming practices within online dating romance frauds and scams. It seeks to map how grooming is defined and conceptualized in this domain, how offenders initiate and sustain fraudulent relationships, and how deception progresses from initial messaging to more intimate engagement. The sources considered span academic articles, case analyses, and policy-oriented reports, with attention to the stages of manipulation, the building of trust, psychological priming, and requests for financial or material gain. The review also identifies victim vulnerabilities and situational factors that may enable exploitation, alongside a range of scam formats, platform contexts, and regional patterns reported in the literature. An economic criminology lens is applied to consider the financial dimensions of harm and the incentives surrounding these schemes. By organizing findings into conceptual themes, typologies, and indicative risk factors, the synthesis highlights how grooming operates within online dating ecosystems and the implications for prevention, detection, and intervention. The catalog
Identified Gaps (AI-Generated)
Gaps include limited empirical understanding of grooming mechanisms enabling ODARFS, sparse data on perpetrators’ demographics and psychology, and unclear how social, cultural, economic, and digital contexts interact to promote grooming. Terminology is inconsistent and grooming is often treated as background rather than core. There is a need for longitudinal or cross-cultural studies, integration of victims’ and platforms’ perspectives, and clearer pathways from trust-building to exploitation.
Methods (AI-Generated)
This scoping review followed a pre-registered protocol and PRISMA-ScR guidelines. It searched seven scholarly and four grey literature databases, screened 3,454 records, and included 87 publications (54 main, 33 updated). Data were extracted on publication characteristics and findings and analyzed abductively with thematic analysis in NVivo, guided by the four objectives and the Scammers Persuasive Technique Model to map grooming practices in ODARFS.
Limitations (AI-Generated)
Limitations include heterogeneity across studies, many treating grooming as background rather than empirically examined, and terminology variation across ODARFS literature. Language restrictions (English/Scandinavian) and grey literature inclusion may affect completeness and quality. Some studies were categorized as multiple countries, hindering country-level inference. The predominance of cross-sectional designs limits causal claims about grooming effects and victimisation pathways.
Future Work (AI-Generated)
Future work should advance understanding of relational deception and trust cultivation within ODARFS, examine perpetrators’ characteristics and motives, and compare cross-cultural and platform-specific contexts. Theoretical models should integrate emotional labour and digital intimacy with grooming processes; assess prevention, policing, and platform-design interventions; and employ longitudinal or experimental designs to establish causal pathways.
AI-Generated Content Notice
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