Exploring the Multi-Dimensional Motivations of Image-Based Sexual Abuse (IBSA) Perpetrators: A Qualitative Study of Convicted Offenders

Background and Objectives: Digital gender-based violence is a growing global concern, with image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) inflicting lasting and often irreversible harm. Beyond inflicting deep psychological trauma on victims, IBSA reveals broader structural inequalities stemming from gendered power imbalances and systemic violence. While previous research has extensively examined the prevalence and victimization patterns of IBSA, empirical studies focusing on perpetrators are scarce. This study addresses this gap by exploring the motivations of IBSA offenders and examining how digital media environments interact with and sustain these motivations, facilitating abusive behaviors.

Methods: Employing a qualitative research design, this study conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 22 convicted male IBSA offenders, aged 20-49, currently incarcerated. The interviews were designed to elicit rich, contextualized accounts of participants’ lived experiences, focusing on the psychological, social, and situational factors that shape their offending behaviors.

Findings: Analysis revealed nine distinct motivational factors, synthesized into four overarching dimensions, each linked to forms of symbolic capital. Sexual Desire: Serves as a foundational driver, with sexual images acting as a primary medium for sexual gratification. Psychological Gratification: Involves self-validation, thrill-seeking through the violation of social and moral boundaries, and stress alleviation, reinforcing self-worth and regulating negative emotions. Gendered Power and Control: A central structural motivation where offenders use sexual images—through coercion and manipulation—to reassert gender dominance and construct symbolic masculinity. Economic Gain: Reflects the commodification of sexual images, transforming them into economic capital and markers of status and social recognition.

Across these dimensions, motivations are not discrete but interdependent. Offenders engage in strategic decision-making processes consistent with rational choice theory, weighing perceived rewards—such as sexual gratification, status enhancement, or financial gain—against relatively low perceived risks in digital environments characterized by anonymity, scalability, and weak enforcement.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings suggest that IBSA perpetration is best understood as a form of socially situated practice in which structural inequalities, gender norms, and the affordances of digital technologies shape individual agency. The objectification of women, misogynistic attitudes, and the pursuit of hegemonic masculinity emerge as central drivers. From a rational choice perspective, the low perceived costs and high symbolic and material rewards of IBSA contribute to its persistence. By conceptualizing IBSA through the lens of capital accumulation and gendered power relations, this study provides a more comprehensive explanatory framework for perpetrator behavior. These insights have important implications for prevention and intervention, highlighting the need to disrupt not only individual motivations but also the broader social and digital conditions that enable the accumulation and deployment of gendered symbolic power.