Honesty, social presence, and self-service in retail

Retail self-service checkouts (SCOs) can benefit consumers and retailers, providing control and autonomy to shoppers independent from staff. Recent research indicates that the lack of presence of staff may provide the opportunity for consumers to behave dishonestly. This study examined whether a social presence in the form of visual, humanlike SCO interface agents had an effect on dishonest user behaviour. Using a simulated SCO scenario, participants experienced various dilemmas in which they could financially benefit themselves undeservedly. We hypothesised that a humanlike social presence integrated within the checkout screen would receive more attention and result in fewer instances of dishonesty compared to a less humanlike agent. Our hypotheses were partially supported by the results. We conclude that companies adopting self-service technology may consider the implementation of social presence to support ethical consumer behaviour, but that more research is required to explore the mixed findings in the current study

Cyber-crime Science = Crime Science + Information Security

Cyber-crime Science is an emerging area of study aiming to prevent cyber-crime by combining security protection techniques from Information Security with empirical research methods used in Crime Science. Information security research has developed techniques for protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information assets but is less strong on the empirical study of the effectiveness of these techniques. Crime Science studies the effect of crime prevention techniques empirically in the real world, and proposes improvements to these techniques based on this. Combining both approaches, Cyber-crime Science transfers and further develops Information Security techniques to prevent cyber-crime, and empirically studies the effectiveness of these techniques in the real world. In this paper we review the main contributions of Crime Science as of today, illustrate its application to a typical Information Security problem, namely phishing, explore the interdisciplinary structure of Cyber-crime Science, and present an agenda for research in Cyber-crime Science in the form of a set of suggested research questions

Social presence and dishonesty in retail

Self-service checkouts (SCOs) in retail can benefit consumers and retailers, providing control and autonomy to shoppers independent from staff, together with reduced queuing times. Recent research indicates that the absence of staff may provide the opportunity for consumers to behave dishonestly, consistent with a perceived lack of social presence. This study examined whether a social presence in the form of various instantiations of embodied, visual, humanlike SCO interface agents had an effect on opportunistic behaviour. Using a simulated SCO scenario, participants experienced various dilemmas in which they could financially benefit themselves undeservedly. We hypothesised that a humanlike social presence integrated within the checkout screen would receive more attention and result in fewer instances of dishonesty compared to a less humanlike agent. This was partially supported by the results. The findings contribute to the theoretical framework in social presence research. We concluded that companies adopting self-service technology may consider the implementation of social presence in technology applications to support ethical consumer behaviour, but that more research is required to explore the mixed findings in the current study.<br/

Justifications for Non-­Consensual Medical Intervention: From Infectious Disease Control to Criminal Rehabilitation

A central tenet of medical ethics holds that it is permissible to perform a medical intervention on a competent individual only if that individual has given informed consent to the intervention. However, in some circumstances it is tempting to say that the moral reason to obtain informed consent prior to administering a medical intervention is outweighed. For example, if an individual’s refusal to undergo a medical intervention would lead to the transmission of a dangerous infectious disease to other members of the community, one might claim that it would be morally permissible to administer the intervention even in the absence of consent. Indeed, as we shall discuss below, there are a number of examples of public health authorities implementing compulsory or coercive measures for the purposes of infectious disease control (IDC). The plausibility of the thought that non-consensual medical interventions might be justified when performed for the purpose of IDC raises the question of whether such interventions might permissibly be used to realize other public goods. In this article we focus on one possibility: whether it could be permissible to non-consensually impose certain interventions that alter brain states or processes through chemical or physical means on serious criminal offenders. We shall suggest that some such interventions might be permissible if they safely and effectively serve to facilitate the offender’s rehabilitation and thereby prevent criminal recidivism

Accessibility and urban design - Knowledge matters

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Resistance is Futile: An Essay in Crime and Commitment

This paper studies a principal-agent relationship in a contractual crime setting. Suppose an agent and a principal sign a contract stipulating some transfer of funds from one player (say the agent) to the next (the principal) contingent on the state of the world announced by the first player. In an economy where there are two types of agents, the Truths (who always report the true state of the world) and the Dares (who dare misreport the true state of the world), we show that no separating contract exists. The optimal pooling contract can then be divided into two parts. For a proportion of Dares (x) smaller than some x * , the agents expected utility decreases as the proportion of Dares (x) increases. For a proportion greater than x * , the agents expected utility is independent of the exact proportion of Dares. In both cases the punishment inflicted to Dares convicted of a crime has no impact on the optimal contract. Investment in prevention is always beneficial if x x * , investment in prevention may have no impact whatsoever on crime, depending on prevention technology and the initial proportion of Dares. Finally, allowing agents to choose their type before the game starts allows us to find the long-run equilibrium proportion of Dares in the economy. Ce document de travail étudie un problème de principal-agent dans un contexte que nous appelons de crime contractuel. Supposons qu un agent et un principal s entendent sur un contrat qui stipule un transfert de fonds d un joueur (disons l agent) vers l autre en fonction de l état de la nature révélée par le premier joueur. Dans une économie où il existe deux types d agents, les Véridiques (qui disent toujours la vérité quant à l état de la nature) et les Changeants (qui annoncent stratégiquement le vrai état ou non), nous montrons qu il n existe pas de contrat séparateur. Le contrat de pooling peut ainsi être découpé en deux parties. Si la proportion de Changeants (x) dans l économie est inférieure à un x * donné, alors l utilité espérée des agents diminue avec une augmentation de la proportion de Changeants. Pour une proportion de Changeants supérieure à x * ,l utilité espérée des agents est indépendante de la proportion exacte de Changeants dans l économie. Dans les deux cas, la pénalité infligée aux Changeants pris en flagrant délit n a aucun impact sur la forme du contrat optimal. Investir en prévention est toujours bénéfique si x x * , dépendant de la proportion initiale de Changeants et de la technologie de prévention, puisque la criminalité y est indépendante de la proportion de Changeants. Enfin, en permettant aux agents de choisir leur type nous trouvons l équilibre de long terme d éléments criminels dans l économie.Crime and Crime prevention, Non-commitment, Moral hazard, Adverse selection, Criminalité et prévention, Absence d'engagement, Aléa moral, Anti-sélection