Do Awareness Campaigns Reduce Financial Fraud?

Abstract

Public and private organizations regularly run awareness campaigns to combat financial fraud. However, there is little empirical evidence as to whether such campaigns work. This paper considers a campaign by a systemically important Danish bank, targeting clients over 40 years of age with a mass message. We utilize the campaign as a quasi-experiment and consider a multitude of linear probability models, employing difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs. None of our models, though controlling for age, sex, relationship status, financial funds, urban residence, and education, find any evidence that the campaign had a significant effect. The results indicate that awareness campaigns relying on mass messaging, such as the one considered in our paper, have little effect in terms of reducing financial fraud.