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Parental Indifference and Children’s Digital Piracy in South Korea: Mediation Effects of Low Self-Control and Misconception

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Abstract

Digital piracy is a global concern for society. Although adolescents’ digital piracy in South Korea is pervasive, its cause has rarely been examined. Using data collected by the Korean Institute of Criminology (KIC) in 2009, this study conducted structural equation modeling to determine if low self-control and social learning theory accounted for digital piracy. This study found that parental indifference increased adolescents’ digital piracy through low self-control and misconception about digital piracy. However, there were no direct effects of parental indifference on the digital piracy behaviors. In particular, the mediation effect in the model combining low self-control and misconception was greater compared to other models. Overall, the combination of low self-control and social learning theory provided a more meaningful framework to explain adolescents’ digital piracy. Results of this study can offer ways to aid in the examination and remediation of this particular form of deviant behaviors on the Internet by adolescents.

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Notes

  1. Thirteen countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and USA (IFPI, 2015).

  2. South Korea has the greatest rate of Internet users in the world (approximately 90% of the population [Statista, 2017]) with the world’s fastest Internet (an average of 26.2 in megabits per second [Belson, 2016]).

  3. To our knowledge, this study that explained digital piracy using low self-control and social learning theories was only a known research paper in South Korea.

  4. [Situation] Minsu’s listening to music on the Internet

    Minsu learned about a P2P site while surfing the Web. On P2P sites, there are various files, such as the latest music, movies, cartoons, and programs that people could hear or see comfortably at home. Although people need to pay for the files, they are using without payment. Minsu uploaded the music files to his blog to share the music with his friend, Eunji. She downloaded the music from his blog and listen to the music, even she knew the music file came from the website.

  5. Cheung and Rensvold (2002) proposed the .01 cutoff point of ΔCFI value. That is, more than .01 change will be significant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, New Mexico State University, 1525 Stewart St. Breland Hall 103, Las Cruces, NM, 88003, USA

    Hyunin Baek

  2. Department of Criminology, University of West Georgia, 1601 Maple St, Carrollton, GA, 30118, USA

    Jason A. Nicholson

  3. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Louisville, 2311 Brigman Hall RM 208, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA

    George E. Higgins

  4. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Louisville, 2311 Brigman Hall RM 219, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA

    Michael M. Losavio

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  1. Hyunin Baek
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  2. Jason A. Nicholson
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  3. George E. Higgins
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  4. Michael M. Losavio
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Correspondence to Hyunin Baek.

Ethics declarations

Data is accessible from the Korean Social Science Data Archive (data code: A1-2009-0119), which is a non-profit social science data archive established by integrating the Korea Social Science Library and the Korean Social Survey Data Archive.

Furthermore, the data was approved by Institutional Review Board in the University of Louisville (IRB number: 15.1093). Ethical problem and informed consent are not issues for this manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

This manuscript does not have potential conflicts of interest because this study used an existing secondary data.

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Baek, H., Nicholson, J.A., Higgins, G.E. et al. Parental Indifference and Children’s Digital Piracy in South Korea: Mediation Effects of Low Self-Control and Misconception. Asian J Criminol 13, 293–309 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-018-9271-3

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