Exploration of the antecedents of digital piracy through a structural equation model

Abstract

The prevalence of unauthorized downloading and duplication has been a serious ethical and financial threat. The current study explored the antecedents of digital piracy attitudes and intentions in a country with a high piracy rate. A structural equation model was proposed to investigate the interrelationships among the proposed antecedents and digital piracy intentions. The model was tested with 268 high school students, 610 undergraduate students and 406 adults. Latent variables of interest were derived from the recent literature on piracy, which were facilitating conditions, optimism bias, previous experiences, prosecution risk, current habits, attitudes towards digital piracy and behavioral intention to conduct piracy. The model revealed a positive relationship between facilitating conditions and optimism bias. Optimism bias and prior experiences had a positive relationship with current digital piracy habits, whereas prosecution risk had a decreasing influence on these habits. Relationships among piracy habits, attitudes and intentions were significant as well. The structural equation model revealed acceptable and consistent fit values across three samples. Findings maintain that further research may resort to the assumptions of the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Theory of Reasoned Action to explain the nature of behavioral intentions towards digital piracy and eliminate undesirable piracy acts