ArticleFrontiers in psychology2026
When awareness is not enough: online fraud susceptibility, threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy and online scam prevention behavior among Chinese university students.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Objective: As university students' learning, social interaction, and payment activities increasingly move online, online scam prevention has become an important issue in digital safety governance in Chinese higher education. Drawing on Protection Motivation Theory, this study examined the relationships among online fraud susceptibility, threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy, and online scam prevention behavior, and further explored latent group differences in online fraud susceptibility. Methods: Data were collected from 765 university students in China. Structural equation modeling was used to test the relationships among the focal variables. Latent profile analysis, combined with the Bolck-Croon-Hagenaars method, was then conducted to compare differences in threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy, and online scam prevention behavior across latent profiles. Results: Online fraud susceptibility was significantly and negatively associated with threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy, and online scam prevention behavior. Both threat awareness and anti-fraud self-efficacy were significantly and positively associated with online scam prevention behavior, whereas the path from threat awareness to anti-fraud self-efficacy was not significant. The mediation results suggest that threat awareness and anti-fraud self-efficacy were statistically supported as two indirect parallel pathways rather than as a stable sequential process. Latent profile analysis identified three groups: low-susceptibility, moderate-susceptibility, and high-susceptibility. The low-susceptibility group showed better overall performance in threat awareness, anti-fraud self-efficacy, and online scam prevention behavior than the other two groups, whereas the difference between the moderate-susceptibility and high-susceptibility groups was mainly reflected in anti-fraud self-efficacy. Conclusion: Differences in online scam prevention behavior among Chinese university students are associated not only with general risk awareness, but also with susceptibility structure, efficacy beliefs, and latent group heterogeneity. The findings suggest that university anti-fraud education should place greater emphasis on strengthening anti-fraud self-efficacy and providing differentiated support for students with different levels of susceptibility.
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