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Three-Level Mechanism of Consumer Digital Piracy: Development and Cross-Cultural Validation

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Abstract

Digital piracy as a continuing problem significantly impacts various stakeholders, including consumers, enterprises, and countries. This study develops a three-level mechanism of determinants of consumer digital piracy behavior, with personal risk as an individual factor, susceptibility to interpersonal influence as an inter-personal factor, and moral intensity as a broad societal factor. Further, it explores the role of rationalization and future piracy intent as outcomes of past piracy behaviors. The authors use survey data from four countries in the European Union to test the system of structural relationships. With an exception of the effect of consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influence on piracy behavior, the conceptual model receives remarkably consistent support across the four countries. Specifically, perception of personal risk and moral intensity negatively affected the reported piracy behavior in all four countries. The results further support the negative influence of moral intensity and the positive influence of past digital piracy behavior on consumers’ use of rationalization. Lastly, personal risk, rationalization, and past digital piracy behavior directly influenced consumers’ intention to engage in digital piracy in the future. The study also discusses implications of the findings and identifies areas of future research.

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Notes

  1. We thank the thoughtful reviewer for pointing this out and for the suggestion to examine the effects of general versus domain (context)-specific measure of consumers’ susceptibility to interpersonal influence in a follow-up study.

  2. Correlation between the two measures was .54 (p < .01), suggesting strong, but not perfect correlation. More detailed results of the additional study are available upon request.

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Acknowledgments

Data collection for this study was supported by the Commission of European Community, contract no. 217514 (EU - 7th Framework Programme). Authors gratefully acknowledge contributions of research partners from all countries participating in this research project, especially Dr Jo Bryce and Dr Elfriede Penz.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva ploscad 17, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Mateja Kos Koklic & Irena Vida

  2. Robins School of Business, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, 23173, USA

    Monika Kukar-Kinney

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  1. Mateja Kos Koklic
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Correspondence to Mateja Kos Koklic.

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Kos Koklic, M., Kukar-Kinney, M. & Vida, I. Three-Level Mechanism of Consumer Digital Piracy: Development and Cross-Cultural Validation. J Bus Ethics 134, 15–27 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2075-1

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