JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Romance scams impose substantial financial and emotional burdens, yet scalable interventions to improve responses to such scams are limited.

Objective:

This study evaluated whether a serious game improves behavioural responses to romance scam attempts.

Methods:

We conducted a three-arm, parallel-group, online randomized controlled trial with UK adults recruited through an online panel. Participants (N=6,928) were randomly assigned to a serious game, a text-based scam-prevention intervention, or a control condition. Participants were not blinded to allocation. The serious game used simulated dating interactions with feedback to teach key scam warning signs. Participants responded to scam and legitimate messages in a simulated dating-app environment immediately post-intervention and at four-week follow-up; the primary outcome was the proportion of scam messages responded to correctly and the secondary outcome was the proportion of encouraging responses to legitimate messages. Primary complete-case analyses included 4,201 participants at Wave 1 and 2,136 at Wave 2, analysed according to randomized allocation. Group differences were analysed using ordinal logistic regression, with results reported as odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Results:

Immediately post-intervention, 85% of scam messages were correctly responded to in the serious game group, compared with 76% in the text-based intervention (OR 2.08, 95% CI 1.81–2.39) and 60% in the control group (OR 6.33, 95% CI 5.48–7.31). At four weeks, correct responding remained higher in the serious game group (75%) than in the text-based intervention (71%; OR 1.38, 95% CI 1.15–1.66) and control groups (70%; OR 1.42, 95% CI 1.19–1.72). The serious game also increased encouraging responses to legitimate messages (50%) compared with the text-based intervention (46%; OR 1.37, 95% CI 1.20–1.57) and control groups (37%; OR 2.81, 95% CI 2.45–3.22), indicating that the serious game did not lead people to be overly cautious when responding to legitimate messages.

Conclusions:

As the first randomized evaluation of a serious game for romance scam prevention, this study found that the game improved behavioural responses to simulated scams, with effects persisting for four weeks. These findings provide evidence that serious games may be a promising online safety intervention.