Self-reported criminal computer behavior among university students in Hong Kong: A study of Big-Five personality traits, moral choice, exploitive manipulative behavior, and addictive tendencies

In response to the rapid increase of computer crimes worldwide, there were pressing needs for helping professionals to have better understanding of the causes and maintenance factors of criminal computer behaviors. With such knowledge, clinical psychologists might be in a better position to formulate appropriate therapeutic treatment strategies for individuals to prevent and quit from their criminal involvement. This current study was a starting attempt to conduct the psychological profiling of local criminal computer activities. It is hypothesized that over and above demographic variables, the degree of computer criminality will be positively correlated with moral decision making style (hedonism), exploitive manipulative tendencies, and proness to computer addiction. Significant negative correlations are also expected with psychological traits (extraversion and neuroticism) as well as moral decision making style (internalization and socialization). 122 local university students participated in this research with 83 hard copy and 39 online questionnaires collected and analyzed. Each participant had to complete a self-reported questionnaire consisting of six parts: (a) Computer Crime Index (CCI), (b) Big-Five Factor Questionnaire (Big-5), (c) Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty Scale (EMAD), (d) Moral Decision Making Scale (MDKS), (e) Computer Addiction Scale (CAS), and (f) demographic information. The results illustrated that the ratio of self-reported criminal involvement of the participants (92.6%) was much higher than findings of similar research outside Hong Kong. The most frequently reported type of criminal computer behaviors was copyright infringement (87.7%), while the least reported was credit card fraud, of which all participants denied any involvement. No significant statistical differences in terms of gender, age, major in study, religion, birth order as well as pen-and-pencil or online completion of questionnaires were noted. Analyses revealed that none of the predictors was of significant predictive value of criminal computer behavior. Thus hypotheses about these suspected relationships were not supported by statistical findings. However, further data analyzes indicated that different types of criminal computer behaviors might be related to different personality traits. In the context of Hong Kong, exploitive manipulative trait was a potential predictive factor of involvement in criminal intimidation, deception and password abuse. Social moral decision making style was another possible predictive factor to password abuse. Copyright infringement was positively correlated to psychological traits of openness and negatively related to age. It was also worthy to note that high computer addictiveness was found related to low neuroticism and high hedonistic moral decision making style. Results of this research appeared to support that the contributing factors for involvement in criminal computer behaviors were multidimensional. This study also illustrated that there was no major difference in the findings collected from pen-and-pencil and online questionnaires. Future research might consider utilizing more online research to reach out to wider internet users so as enhancing greater representation of Internet population. Apart from quantitative research, considerations should also be made to conduct qualitative research such as case studies in order to generate a more comprehensive picture on the possible predictable factors for criminal computer behaviors. Further research should continue before a more conclusive remark could be made upon the relationship between personality traits and criminal computer behaviors.