IP Outreach Research > IP Crime
Reference
| Title: | Why Do Chinese Users Use Pirated Software: An Integrative Perspective? |
| Author: | Minxue Huang and Maohong Liu [Wuhan University], Huawei Zhu [Peking University] |
| Source: | Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing: 5879-5882 |
| Year: | 2007 |
Details
| Subject/Type: | Piracy |
| Focus: | Software |
| Country/Territory: | China |
| Objective: | To obtain a deeper understanding of the piracy behaviours of Chinese individual (common/professional) and firm software users. |
| Sample: | Common (95 college students), professional (62 professional IT department workers) and firm software users (42 mid-level managers) |
| Methodology: | Questionnaire |
Main Findings
Common user intention to pirate software is driven by attitude toward piracy and subjective norm: the more favourable a common user’s attitude toward piracy, the more likely he/she is to pirate; the more supportive of piracy the social environment/norms are, the more likely common users are to commit piracy.
Piracy intention of professional users is influenced by attitude toward piracy, and by perceived behavioural control (the greater the individual perception of the ease inherent in performing software piracy, the likelier he/she is to pirate).
Firm user intention to pirate is driven by attitude toward piracy, perceived behavioural control, and perceived punishment (perceived legal punishment discourages piracy).
The price of legal software was not found to have an impact on software piracy for any of the user groups, which is possibly due to the fact that common/professional users are so used to buying pirate software that the have no knowledge of legal software prices. Firm users are more concerned with punishment risk than prices.
The authors discourage a one-size-fits-all approach: different users make decisions on using pirated software based on different considerations, which calls for different measures targeting different users in order to combat software piracy.
First, governments should enforce copyright laws at firm level as these are influenced by perceived legal punishment. Professional users should be educated and persuaded to take the lead in using legal software. Advertising and communication campaigns can help instill knowledge and awareness of piracy in common users.
[Date Added: Oct 22, 2008 ]