This report provides results of a study exploring the costs and consequences of technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) in intimate partner violence (IPV).
This study, undertaken with Dr. Mark Cohen, the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), and IPSOS, the Justice Information Resource Network, assessed the costs and consequences associated with three types of technology-facilitated abuse within the context of IPV: cyberstalking, image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), and doxing. The results indicate that non-cisgender respondents experience higher rates of IBSA, cyberstalking, any victimization, and poly-victimization compared to cisgender individuals. The study also found a substantial economic burden on TFA victims. The data from this study reveal the nuances of three types of technology-facilitated abuse: IBSA, cyberstalking, and doxing. Technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) involves tools such as texting, mobile applications, smart devices, telecommunications networks, and social networks to bully, harass, stalk, or intimidate another person. The purpose of this project was to produce greater understanding of the harms victims and the public more generally suffer related to TFA within IPV, both those with tangible financial costs and harms that are intangible, with attention also paid to the experiences of minors. The goals were (1) to document the costs and consequences of three types of TFA (cyberstalking, IBSA, and doxing); (2) to estimate prevalence of these crimes via a nationally representative, general population survey; (3) to provide willingness-to-pay estimates of their costs via discrete choice experiment (DCE); and (4) to use the results of achieving goals 2 and 3 to estimate the costs of cyberstalking, IBSA, and doxing to the United States.