Ransomware, Emotions, and the Decision to Pay: Evidence from a Factorial Experiment

Ransomware victims must decide quickly whether to pay, yet the emotional dynamics of this decision are not well understood. We report a pre-registered between subjects vignette experiment with a nationwide U.S. adult sample testing how ransomware notes shape such emotions as fear, anger, guilt, and shame, and how these responses relate to stated willingness to pay. Participants were randomly assigned to a neutral policy frame, or a coercive ransomware note, and we additionally compare locked files versus stolen data threats.

Results show clear differences between threat messaging and the neutral policy frame in both emotional responses and payment intentions, while the locked vs. stolen contrast mainly affected the emotions rather than payment intentions. We also report indirect effect decompositions that evaluate whether observed patterns are consistent with emotion mediated pathways under standard identification assumptions. These findings inform incident-response communication and policy.

SPEAKER

Dr. Zarina Vakhitova is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Award Senior Research Fellow at Monash University with expertise in the intersection of technology and crime, focusing on how technology facilitates, mitigates, and prevents criminal activity. She has an extensive publication record in leading international peer-reviewed journals such as PLoS ONE, Computers in Human Behavior, Crime & Delinquency, Policing and Society, and Crime Science.