An Empirical Study of the Piracy Behavior of Online Digital Content

Digital content piracy has been shown to be an emerging societal problem, However, Studies on digital content piracy are very limited. In this paper, we try to find whether Theory of Planned Behavior(TPB) can explain the online digital content piracy in China. In addition to the finding of TPB's usefulness, We also examine the cross-cultural differences between Korea and China in behavior towards online digital content piracy. we argue that cultural factors moderate the strength of the relationships in the TPB model in online digital content piracy. we use a theoretical model of behavior based on the framework of the TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior) and Hofstede's national cultural dimensions. Our results indicate that the general TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior) model of software piracy is broadly applicable to digital content piracy in China. Our findings also show that most of the hypothesized moderating effects of national cultural factors were found to be significant.