Reducing undergraduate students’ trust of commercial contract cheating websites with an academic support literacy intervention

Abstract The acquisition of products and services from the commercial contract cheating industry has an extensive history, with the industry experiencing significant growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, these commercial entities have added generative artificial intelligence (genAI) to their websites to ensure continued use of their services by postsecondary students. Cheating providers use various other persuasive features (e.g., assurance of quality work, use of the words ‘guarantee’ and ‘secure’) to convince students to trust them and become customers. To counter the efforts of commercial cheating services, education about the cheating industry and academic integrity should reduce any trust that students have in them. We developed an academic support literacy module about appropriate (e.g., university assistance, legitimate tutors) and inappropriate (e.g., contract cheating services) academic support. Before and after the module, 39 introductory psychology students rated how much they trusted various websites using a 12-item consumer trust scale. Although a drop in trust after viewing the module was significant for all three types of academic support websites, it was greatest for contract cheating websites. Significant correlations were also found between the non-planning aspects of impulsiveness (as measured by the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale [BIS-11]; Patton et al. J Clin Psychol 51(6):768–774, 1995) and reputation ratings given for the contract cheating websites. Further study of perceptions (using objective and subjective measures) of contract cheating websites and how aspects of impulsiveness on website perceptions is necessary for the continued development of educational interventions to reduce temptations to engage with the industry. Our study findings contribute to the literature on the promotion of academic integrity and prevention of academic misconduct, particularly contract cheating, through education.