Why do employees commit fraud? Theory, measurement, and validation

Previous research on corporate governance has extensively explored the motives of corporate fraud. However, this research has paid little attention to employees, the real executors of fraud, resulting in the psychological and behavioral decision-making process of employees who commit fraud in enterprises becoming a “black box” that has not yet been opened. Based on the theory of planned behavior, our study integrates the existing research findings on driving factors of employee fraud and anti-fraud practical experience, extracts the key factors of employee fraud motive, and develops a multidimensional scale of employee fraud motive. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) generates three subscales, comprising 14 items, measuring attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control of employee fraud motive. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supports the reliability, discriminant validity and convergent validity of the new scale. The multiple regression results show that the score of employee fraud motive is positively correlated with the amount of employee fraud occurrence, indicating that the predictive validity of the scale holds. Overall, the scale developed in our study displays good reliability and validity, and is worth spreading.