Effects of Enduring Involvement on Intention toward Digital Piracy: The Case of Japanese Anime

Abstract

Recently, digital piracy has been a major problem in the content industry, and a massive amount of anime has been illegally uploaded to the Internet in Japan. Previous studies have drawn on social psychology theories to explore the motivation to pirate entertainment media. This research, however, attempts to apply the concept of consumer involvement to find possible factors affecting intention toward piracy. The author focuses on enduring involvement and its facets in the context of leisure activities. Data were primally obtained from Japanese undergraduate/graduate students through an online survey, and a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to test the model developed. As a result, the following two effects on intention were confirmed with statistical significance: risk consequence of watching anime (positive and moderate) and moral obligation (negative and strong). From these findings, the author recommends that stakeholders commit to enlightening anime viewers about the importance of stopping digital piracy, and encouraging them to be more proactive in using free, official services to mitigate the risk for anime consumers.