Determinants of Digital Piracy among Youth in South Africa

Abstract

This paper investigates digital piracy, the information technology-enabled theft of digital goods, among the South African youth. It proposes a “unified” comprehensive three-stage model to look at the determinants of piracy attitude, intention and behaviour. In particular, it looks at the differences between piracy of video, music and software piracy. Although our findings confirm the impact of most of the factors found in the literature, not all of the factors were found to have a significant correlation. The model was particularly successful for stage 2 in explaining piracy intention through piracy attitude, affordability, personal normative beliefs and perceived behavourial control. However, in a first stage, gender, perceived ethical importance and institutional attitude towards piracy were found to impact these intermediate factors. Finally, it was found that access to enabling technology moderates the influence of piracy intention on actual piracy behaviour quite strongly.