In the realm of cybercrime, technologies that facilitate illicit activities also produce uncertainties based on the hybridity between digital communication and offline presence. Social media platforms have blurred the lines between types of drug sellers, bringing the recreational and the commercial into the same marketplace. In the Nordic data used in this paper, 52 text-based qualitative interviews with recreational and commercial sellers are analyzed via process and variance analysis to identify the relationship between cognitive strategies and seller positions. We ask how sellers’ decision-making processes differ and intersect. Theoretically, we use cognitive sociology to enrich understanding of culture, trust, and rational decision-making in this context. Our findings reveal that recreational sellers often adopt a low-risk, low-gain strategy rooted in cognitive biases, reflecting the recreational nature of their engagement. In contrast, commercially competent sellers employ more complex cognitive strategies, including gut feelings, thus adjusting their decisions with less reliance on initial assessments, leading to a more calculated approach with higher risk tolerance. We conclude with a discussion of intervention strategies; here, we argue for the need for a dual strategy that targets and capitalizes on the differences in cognitive biases in an effective way that poses less harm to recreational sellers.

中文翻译：

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理性行为的直觉：混合数字社交媒体市场中商业和娱乐卖家认知策略的差异

在网络犯罪领域，促进非法活动的技术也会因数字通信和线下存在之间的混合性而产生不确定性。社交媒体平台模糊了不同类型毒品销售商之间的界限，将娱乐性和商业性带入同一市场。在本文使用的 Nordic 数据中，通过过程和方差分析对 52 个基于文本的娱乐和商业卖家进行定性访谈，以确定认知策略和卖家立场之间的关系。我们询问卖家的决策过程有何不同和交叉。从理论上讲，我们利用认知社会学来丰富对这种背景下的文化、信任和理性决策的理解。我们的研究结果表明，休闲卖家经常采取一种源于认知偏差的低风险、低收益策略，反映了他们参与的娱乐性质。相比之下，有商业能力的卖家采用更复杂的认知策略，包括直觉，从而在减少对初始评估的依赖的情况下调整他们的决策，从而采取更具计算性的方法和更高的风险承受能力。我们最后讨论了干预策略；在这里，我们认为需要采取双重策略，以有效的方式针对和利用认知偏差的差异，从而减少对娱乐卖家的伤害。