Consumer attitudes toward false representation
Abstract
Purpose
Misrepresenting the nature of an accident to obtain insurance money for a loss not covered by the insurance policy is definitely unethical and will cause serious harm to insurers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this issue and examine the impacts of insurance coverage and fraud sizes on the consumer attitudes toward the false representation.
Design/methodology/approach
Questionnaire surveys were collected with 210 adults in Taiwan.
Findings
Results indicated that insurance coverage affected ethical judgment and perceived fairness, and ethical judgment and perceived fairness related to the false representation. Perceived fairness is related to ethical judgment (the more people feel it is fair to cheat, the higher propensity they have to deem the cheating as ethical).
Originality/value
Concern for claim fraud in the insurance market has dramatically increased over the past few years. However, very little research has examined the impacts of coverage and fraud sizes on such behavior. This paper takes a further step in testing the effects of the two factors on individuals' intentions to commit false representation. The results suggest that coverage does affect the intention to misreport claim amounts.
Keywords
Citation
Tseng, L. and Shih, M. (2012), "Consumer attitudes toward false representation", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 163-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/13590791211220430
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited