Digital Piracy: Factors that Influence the Intention to Pirate – A Structural Equation Model Approach

ABSTRACT

Faster Internet connections are breaking most of the geographic barriers. At the same time, the huge digital content that have been generated in last years is motivating new forms of digital piracy. We know that piracy of copyrighted digital material has a huge impact on countries’ economy, being a major issue for the whole society and not only for content creators. The purpose of this paper is to investigate digital piracy intention. For that purpose, we have expanded the framework of the theory of planned behavior using the utility theory, the deterrence theory and other relevant constructs. Using data from students of a Portuguese university and high school, a sample of 590 questionnaires has been collected. Two models were developed and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The first considers the full sample (Full Model), while the second considers only those who had pirated (Pirate Model). The pirate model confirmed the existence of a significant and strong relation between past behavior and intention toward digital piracy.

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Notes on contributors

Rúben Meireles

Rúben Meireles obtained his Master degree on Economics and Business Administration at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Porto (UP), and holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Coimbra. Ruben is now a System Developer working in a leading consultant in the management of agile software solutions.

Pedro Campos

Pedro Campos is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Porto, with a PhD in Management Sciences by U. Porto, BSc in Applied Maythematics (U. Portucalense). He is a member of LIAAD (Lab. of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support), at INESC TEC, LA. Pedro coordinates the Post-Graduate Programme in Business Intelligence and Analytics at Porto Business School.