ImmuniFraug: A Metacognitive Intervention Anti-Fraud Approach to Enhance Undergraduate Students' Cyber Fraud Awareness

Abstract: Cyber fraud now constitutes over half of criminal cases in China, with undergraduate students experiencing a disproportionate rise in victimization. Traditional anti-fraud training remains predominantly passive, yielding limited engagement and retention. This paper introduces ImmuniFraug, a LLM-based metacognitive intervention that delivers immersive, multimodal fraud simulations integrating text, voice, and visual avatars across ten prevalent fraud types. Each scenario is designed to replicate real-world persuasion tactics and psychological pressure, while post-interaction debriefs provide grounded feedback in protection motivation theory and reflective prompts to reinforce learning. In a controlled study with 846 Chinese undergraduates, ImmuniFraug was compared to official text-based materials. Linear Mixed-Effects Modeling (LMEM) reveals that the interactive intervention significantly improved fraud awareness (p = 0.026), successfully providing incremental learning value even when controlling for participants' extensive prior exposure to anti-fraud education, alongside high narrative immersion (M = 56.95/77). Thematic analysis of interviews revealed key effectiveness factors: perceived realism, adaptive deception, enforced time pressure, emotional manipulation awareness, and enhanced self-efficacy. Findings demonstrate that by shifting the focus from passive knowledge acquisition to active metacognitive engagement, LLM-based simulations offer a scalable and ecologically valid new paradigm for anti-fraud training and fostering fraud resilience.