DİJİTAL KORSANLIĞA KARŞI LİSANS ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN OLUMSUZ TUTUMLARINI ETKİLEYEN FAKTÖRLER

Abstract

Digital piracy has become even more important as technology and the internet evolve and the use of personal computers increases. Companies that produce music, games, books and software for digital media have not been able to prevent piracy, although they make more efforts to protect their products every day. Although some studies have concluded that digital piracy has declined with the increase of legal services that provide streaming media such as Spotify and Netflix in some countries, research has found that digital piracy is at the peak of all time (Global Online Piracy Study, 2018). The increase in the number of consumers accessing the internet has been one of the most effective elements in the spread of digital piracy. Although the 2014 report of the United Nations indicates that half of the World will have access to Internet by 2017, this is still unrealized as of today, the speed of access to the internet is slowing down, but access to the internet is available in most households today especially in developed and developing countries (UN Broadband Commission, 2014). The number of individuals using the internet in Turkey rapidly increased in recent years, 83.8% of households now have access to the internet (Hanehalkı Araştırması, 2018). The increase in internet access in households has allowed access to products such as books and music in digital environments, in addition, there has been an increase in the amount of games and software downloaded from digital media to computers. Although internet access and the increase of digital piracy is the subject of many researches, it is necessary to investigate the factors that affect the negative attitudes of consumers towards digital piracy products. In addition, most of the research on digital piracy has focused on the issue of piracy; however, few studies have investigated the factors affecting the purchase, downloading, sharing or copying of illegal copyrighted material (Tjiptono & Arli, 2016). In this study, the negative attitudes of the university students towards pirated products, which constitute the majority of consumers who prefer digital piracy (Sinha & Mandel, 2008), and the relations among the concepts of pirated product downloading, social environment, moral judgment and fear were investigated. In addition, the relationship between a negative attitude towards piracy and the non-use of piracy is also investigated. As a result of this study, it was seen that the increase in the habit of downloading pirate products decreased the negative attitude towards piracy. This result is in line with previous studies. People with habit of downloading pirate products have difficulty in developing negative attitudes towards the pirate product because they are behaviors that are carried out automatically by the influences of past experiences (Limayem, Khalifa & Chin, 2004; Cronan & Al-Rafee 2008). Another result is that the increase in social environment support reduces the negative attitude towards piracy. In previous studies, different results have been reached on this subject (Aleassa, Pearson & McClurg, 2011; Cronan & Al-Rafee 2008). According to the results of this study, the social environment of the family and friends to support the use of pirated products reduces the negative attitude towards the use of pirated products. Similarly, some studies on moral judgment and attitudes towards piracy have not found a meaningful relationship (Al-Rafee & Cronan, 2006), there are some studies that have found a meaningful (Cronan & Al-Rafee 2008; Shoham, Ruvio & Davidow, 2008). In this study, it was determined that finding the use of pirate products morally wrong increases the negative attitude towards the pirate product. The last finding of this study is that an increase in negative attitude towards piracy increases the behavior of not using pirated products. In many previous studies, the relationship between attitude and behavior within the scope of theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior was examined and similar results were obtained within this study (Aleassa et al., 2011; Yoon 2011). Purchasing power is an important factor affecting both purchasing legal products and purchasing digital pirated products. In this study, there is a similarity between the purchasing power of the participants because university students are used as the main population. In future studies, examining the effects of purchasing power on the purchase of digital pirated products by differentiating main population may contribute to the literature. It may be difficult for participants to express their attitudes explicitly in a subject that is not properly addressed by society, such as the use of pirated products. For this reason, it is possible to obtain more prejudicial data by using projective method and scenario based experiments in future studies. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]