Cyber-Victimization Trends in Trinidad & Tobago: the Results of an Empirical Research

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Authors

Troy Smith¹ , NIkolaos Stamatakis²

1. Institute of Criminology and Public Safety
2. United Arab Emirates University

Conference / event

The University of Trinidad and Tobago 3rd Research Symposium (2021), August 2021 (Virtual)

Poster summary

In this, study we used the Routine Activity Theory (RAT) to examine online-related activities that affect cybercrime victimization in the Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago. First, we developed predictive models of operational risk of cybercrime victimization (unauthorized access and cyberbullying) using supervised learning methods, i.e., random forest and logistic regression, using survey data on online exposure, target suitability and capable guardianship collected from university students through an online self-administered survey. We found that that online activities that increase target exposure and accessibility increased victimization risk while physical methods of guardianship can be weakly protective. Further, the RAT was found to be better able to explain cyberbullying than unauthorized access victimization. The observed risk factors for Trinidad and Tobago were significantly similar to the outcomes of North American and European studies.

Keywords

Cybercrime, Victimization, Routine activities theory, Trinidad and Tobago, Risk models, Random forest

Research areas

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

References

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3. Kshetri, N. (2013). Cybercrime and Cybersecurity in Latin American and Caribbean Economies. In Cybercrime and Cybersecurity in the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Leukfeldt, E., & Yar, M. (2016). Applying Routine Activity Theory to Cybercrime: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis. Deviant Behavior, 37(3), 263–280
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7. Smith, T., & Stamatakis, N. (2021). Cyber-victimization Trends in Trinidad & Tobago: The Results of An Empirical Research. The International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence and Cybercrime, 4(1), 46–63. https://doi.org/10.52306/04010421JINE3509
8. Smith, T., & Stamatakis, N. (2020). Defining Cybercrime in Terms of Routine Activity and Spatial Distribution: Issues and Concerns. International of Cyber Criminology, 14(2), 433–459. https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4769989
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Funding

No data provided

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2022 Smith et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.