Technology-Facilitated and Face-to-Face Workplace Sexual Harassment Perpetration: Prevalence, Predictors, and Perpetration Patterns

The increasing reliance on digital communications and remote working arrangements has introduced new opportunities for workplace sexual harassment. Technology-facilitated workplace sexual harassment involves unwelcome and/or threatening sexual conduct via mobile, online and other digital platforms within workplace contexts. While face-to-face sexual harassment is widely addressed in organizational policies and legislation, technology-facilitated forms remain comparatively underexamined, particularly from a perpetration perspective. This study presents the findings from a national Australian survey ( n = 3,356), examining the prevalence, modality, attitudinal correlates and demographic predictors of workplace sexual harassment perpetration among respondents who identified as men or women. Binary and multinomial logistic regression models were used to identify predictors of perpetration across modalities, whereas negative binomial regression models examined behavioral intensity and cross-modality associations among perpetrators ( n = 870). Overall, 26.0% of respondents reported engaging in at least one form of workplace sexual harassment, including 3.4% who engaged exclusively in technology-facilitated harassment, 8.1% exclusively in face-to-face harassment and 14.5% in both modalities. Discriminatory attitudes and sexual harassment myth acceptance emerged as the strongest attitudinal predictors of perpetration. Younger age, identifying as a man and urban residence were also associated with elevated odds of perpetration, with the largest effects observed among dual-modality perpetrators. Higher technology-facilitated behavior counts were associated with higher face-to-face behavior counts (incidence rate ratio = 1.19, p < .001), indicating substantial overlap between modalities. These findings suggest that technology-facilitated workplace sexual harassment forms part of a broader pattern of workplace sexual harassment perpetration and highlights the importance of prevention strategies that address discriminatory attitudes, sexual harassment myths and technology-facilitated behaviors within workplace policy and practice.