Abstract
Unlawful digital media sharing is common and believed to be extremely damaging to business. Understanding unlawful file sharers' motivations offers the opportunity to develop business models and behavioral interventions to maximize consumers' and businesses’ benefit. This paper uses a systematic review of unlawful file sharing research, and the Theory of Planned Behavior, to motivate a large-scale panel study in which initial determinants were used to predict subsequent behavior. A meta-analysis found Attitudes, Subjective Norms and Perceived Behavioral Control were all associated with unlawful file sharing. Media type and demographic differences in the importance of Perceived Behavioral Control were found and attributed to more accurate evaluation of familiar activities, i.e., greater experience increases the influence of Perceived Behavioral Control but age does not.The panel study confirmed that greater past experience was associated with Perceived Behavioral Control and Intention. We conclude that past experience increases the efficacy of the Theory of Planned Behavior and specifically Perceived Behavioral control in predicting behavior, contrary to some widely held beliefs about the role of experience. The role of experience is therefore crucial to understanding people's choices. Practically, improving social approval, positive evaluation and access to lawful media should reduce unlawful behavior.
Highlights
Half the adult population of the United States share digital media unlawfully (Karaganis & Renkema, 2013) at an estimated cost of $12.5 billion per year (Siwek, 2007)
Taylor (2012) used software to track the actual downloading of media via p2p networks in student dormitories. This was the only study to correlate intentions with future behavior with all other studies that estimated the correlation between the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) constructs and behavior utilizing a measure of past experience (k 1⁄4 7)
The subsequent panel study showed a similar pattern for unlawful downloading behavior. In both studies Attitude, Subjective Norms and Perceived Behavioral Control (PBC) were generally predictive of intentions and behavior, the panel study found that substantial variance was shared by Attitude and Subjective Norms and unlike the meta-analysis Subjective Norms were not predictive for music, while Attitude was not predictive for eBooks
Summary
Half the adult population of the United States share digital media unlawfully (Karaganis & Renkema, 2013) at an estimated cost of $12.5 billion per year (Siwek, 2007). Unlawful file sharing, is where people copy, share or download media without the consent of the copyright holder. Unlawful file sharers are a vast source of potential customers who are viewed by the industry as a threat which must be countered to prevent the collapse of the legal marketplace (RIAA, 2015). This is not just a legal issue e legal interventions alone are often insufficient to motivate change. A recent study has identified that reported file sharing behavior was predicted by the perceived benefit of the activity to consumers, but not by perceptions of legal risk (Watson, Zizzo & Fleming, in press)
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