Understanding Human and Interface Design Factors in Canadian Cybercrime Reporting
For Canadian law enforcement and policymakers, this identifies interface design as a key factor to increase cybercrime reporting rates.
The paper investigates why most cybercrimes in Canada go unreported, finding that perceived severity and personal traits influence reporting, and that AI chatbots improve report completeness and user satisfaction over online forms.
Cybercrime affects a majority of Canadians, yet most incidents go unreported. We conducted two studies to examine the factors influencing cybercrime reporting and the role of interface design in victims' reporting experiences. Our survey provides individual-level insights into the persistent gap in cybercrime reporting in Canada, showing how perceived incident severity and personal characteristics shape reporting behaviour. Our usability study compared reporting with an AI chatbot to an online form; chatbots facilitated more complete reports and led to higher user satisfaction, highlighting how interface design impacts reporting outcomes.