“To Pirate or Not to Pirate- A Comparative Study of the Ethical Versus Other Influences on the Consumer’s Software Acquisition-Mode Decision

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• 作者：Pola B. Gupta ; Stephen J. Gould and Bharath Pola
• 关键词：software piracy ; acquisition ; mode decision ; consumer ethics ; diffusion ; marketing ; government policy ; consumer welfare
• 刊名：Journal of Business Ethics
• 出版年：2004
• 出版时间：2004
• 年：2004
• 卷：55
• 期：3
• 页码：255-274
• 全文大小：163 KB
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Philosophy
  Ethics
  Economic Growth
  Management
  Quality of Life Research
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-0697

文摘

Consumers of software often face an acquisition-mode decision, namely whether to purchase or pirate that software. In terms of consumer welfare, consumers who pirate software may stand in opposition to those who purchase it. Marketers also face a decision whether to attempt to thwart that piracy or to ignore, if not encourage it as an aid to their softwares diffusion, and policymakers face the decision whether to adopt interventionist policies, which are government-centric, or laissez faire policies, which are marketer-centric. Here in order to assess the decision-making of all three of these stakeholders, we focus on the consumers point-of-view as central and examine it by considering on a comparative basis the ethical dimension versus other dimensions, including economic, legal, and other salient consumer behavior considerations. Based on a survey of 689 software consumers conducted over the Internet, the results indicate that ethics as a factor is embedded in a multidimensional set of determinant factors influencing software piracy, including attitudes, legal aspects, social support, perceptions of economic loss and age. Policy and research implications, based on these findings, are provided.