Cumulative effects of risk factors and protective factors for cybercrime offending

The aim of this study is to better understand unipolar/bipolar relationships and cumulative effects of risk factors and protective factors for cybercrime offending. We address important gaps in the literature, as the individual characteristics of cybercrime offenders remain poorly understood. Utilizing a cross-sectional survey sample of 1240 young people from the Netherlands, we estimated a number of regression models to explore associations with criminal hacking across the domains of personality, peers and online opportunity. The findings indicate that risk and protective factors may represent opposite ends of the same continuum, such that the same variable can decrease odds of cybercrime at one end while increasing it at the other. Exposure to a multitude of risk influences was associated with substantially higher odds of cybercrime offending, as respondents highest in risk were nearly 9 times more likely to engage in cybercrime compared to respondents lowest in risk. Findings imply that it can be beneficial for cybercrime offender prevention to target risk factors across various domains and to stimulate positive influences as well. The peer domain may require priority, considering particularly strong effects. We encourage prospective longitudinal research designs to further investigate the predictors of cybercrime offending.