How Personality Shapes the Impact of Persuasion Strategies in Scam Warnings: Evidence from the Chinese Context

Online scams continue to be a pervasive issue, and designing personalized scam warnings can effectively reduce the number of victims. This study explores how individual personality traits influence compliance with different persuasion strategies in China. We designed various scam warnings based on six key persuasion strategies and collected data from 1,186 Chinese participants through an online experiment. The results reveal that warnings using authority, social proof, and scarcity strategies significantly enhance effectiveness. Network analysis further uncovers the complex relationships between the Big Five personality traits and persuasion strategies. Individuals with higher conscientiousness respond more positively to consistency strategies, while those with high neuroticism are more influenced by social proof and authority strategies. In contrast, individuals with high openness show a greater responsiveness to reciprocity strategies and are less sensitive to authority and scarcity tactics. The findings highlight the importance of tailoring scam warnings based on personality traits to improve their effectiveness in China.