The threat of formal sanctions is the criminal justice system’s primary tool to discourage online and offline deviant behavior. Yet, scholars have expressed strong concerns about the effectiveness of formal sanctions to deter cybercrime. Even more surprising is the sparsity of deterrence research in the cybercrime literature. This study examined the effects of perceived formal and informal sanctions on digital piracy, computer hacking, and online harassment in a large American college sample. Perceived formal sanctions was negatively correlated with software piracy, media piracy, password cracking, accessing accounts, sending mean messages privately online, and posting mean messages. Higher levels of perceived formal sanctions did not significantly predict any form of cybercrime, however, when controlling for informal sanctions and deviant peer associations. The implications of the findings for our ability to deter deviant behavior in cyberspace are explored.

正式制裁的威胁是刑事司法系统阻止网上和线下越轨行为的主要工具。然而，学者们对正式制裁对阻止网络犯罪的有效性表示强烈关注。更为令人惊讶的是，网络犯罪文献中威慑研究的稀疏性。这项研究在美国的一个大型大学样本中研究了正式和非正式制裁对数字盗版，计算机黑客和在线骚扰的影响。可以感觉到的正式制裁与软件盗版，媒体盗版，密码破解，访问帐户，在网上私下发送恶意消息以及发布恶意消息负相关。较高程度的正式制裁并未显着预测任何形式的网络犯罪，但是，在控制非正式制裁和异常同伴协会时。探索了这些发现对我们遏制网络空间中异常行为的能力的暗示。