Samenvatting

This study focusses on determinants of willingness to report cybercrime to the police or to other organizations and motivations for (not) reporting victimization. In this study, a questionnaire containing vignettes is used. Vignettes are semi-experimental designs in which hypothetical situations are presented and certain factors can be manipulated between and within respondents. Factors that are measured within the vignettes are the type and seriousness of the offence, the relationship between offender and victim and which possibilities for reporting the offence are available.
It is shown that the type of offence is an important determinant for willingness to report the offence, which is highest for fraud, followed by hacking and malware. Likewise, willingness to report is higher for more serious offences than for less serious offences. These results are comparable to results on willingness to report traditional crimes.
With regard to psychological determinants, results are not in line with previous results on willingness to report traditional crimes. For the relationship between offender and victim, mixed results are found. If the offender is an acquaintance of the victim, willingness to report to the police increases, but willingness to report to another organization decreases, compared to the offender being unfamiliar to the victim. Another surprising result is that no correlation is found between attitudes towards the police and willingness to report offences. Also unexpectedly, it is found that respondents who have previously reported crime and were unsatisfied about this experience, were more willing to report offences than respondents who never reported crimes before.
Regarding motivations for willingness to report, it is found that, in general, motivations for reporting cybercrime are strongly comparable to motivations for reporting traditional crime, however, differences in motivations are found between the different types of cybercrime.