Investigating the Relationship Between Awareness and Willingness to Engage in Money Mule Activities: A Conceptual Analysis

Abstract

Money mule activities such as the recruitment of individuals to execute illegal money transfers at the behest of criminals represent one of the serious challenges to both financial security and law enforcement in general. The paper addresses how awareness about money mule activities is related to the willingness to participate in them specifically by investigating the moderating role of perceived risk and social influence. The main objective of this research is therefore to explain how awareness may affect one’s intention to join such a scheme and how perceived risk and social influence can change this relationship. This paper is conceptual in nature and the research design shall employ a structured online survey for collecting the data from a stratified sample of 300 participants. Awareness, Willingness, Perceived Risk and Social Influence will be measured using previously validated scales. The data analysis consists of correlation and regression analyses testing direct impacts while SEM is used to test the conceptual framework. Results show that increased awareness significantly decreases the intention to become a money mule and supporting TPB. Perceived risk amplifies this negative impact while social influence can either reinforce or reduce the effect of awareness given the dominant social pressures. These findings suggest that anti-money mule strategies should be comprehensive, influencing not only awareness but also perceptions of risk and social influences. Practical implications relate to targeted awareness campaigns addressing the influence of social pressures and community-based interventions. The limitation of this study is seen in its cross-sectional design with a possible bias of self-reporting data. Future research should investigate the long-term causal effects and the influence of different intervention strategies on populations. The study fills an important gap in knowledge about the current practice of money mule behavior and offers insightful recommendations for practitioners in view of further development and improvement of prevention.