A serious game to improve the verbal resilience against doorstep scams

Abstract

Doorstep scams, scams in which con artists tell convincing but fraudulent stories in order to enter the house of a victim and/or steal personal belongings or information, have a high impact on victims. These victims are often elderly people. Existing campaigns mostly focus on the behavioural aspects that help to prevent a doorstep scam from happening, but verbal skills also contribute to the resilience of possible victims. In this research, a serious game is designed and evaluated for this purpose. The results of the evaluation are positive. The serious game is specifically seen as a valuable addition to existing training meetings.

Keywords

• serious games
• virtual agents
• voice analysis
• doorstep scams
• elderly users