Peer contagion, lenient legal-ethical position, and music piracy intentions in emerging adults: Mindfulness as a protective factor

Abstract

Music piracy is a prevalent, costly, and illegal global phenomenon. The objective of this study was to test whether different facets of mindfulness (attention, present focus, awareness, and acceptance) moderated a mediation process in which digital piracy in friends promotes a lenient legal-ethical position that fosters music piracy intentions in emerging adults. We controlled for personality traits (Big Five), emotion regulation (reappraisal and suppression), time spent listening to music, various Internet-related behaviors (non-academic Internet use, downloading, social networking, smartphone use), and sociodemographics (gender, age, and level of education). Participants were 156 emerging adults (aged between 18 and 25 years) who studied at a Canadian university. Moderated mediation analyses (bootstrapping 50,000 random resamples) suggested that social influence from digital piracy in friends might be a risk factor that has: (i) a direct effect on music piracy intentions; (ii) an indirect effect on music piracy intentions via lenient legal-ethical position; and (iii) an effect on lenient legal-ethical position that can be buffered by attention, a facet of mindfulness that thereby acts as a protective factor. This study draws novel directions for research on the prevention of music piracy, notably the possibility that mindfulness is a protective factor against peer contagion of digital piracy in emerging adulthood.