Does ethical ideology affect software piracy attitude and behaviour? An empirical investigation of computer users in China

Abstract

This study empirically examines Chinese computer users' ethical ideology and its relationship to their software piracy attitude and behaviour. The investigation reveals several important findings. First, cluster analysis results show that Chinese computer users can be divided into four ethical ideology types (i.e., situationists, absolutists, subjectivists, and exceptionists) reasonably consistent with Forsyth's taxonomy. Second, when compared with situationists, absolutists, and exceptionists, subjectivists are found to have the least unfavourable attitude towards software piracy and are most frequently engaged in software piracy. Third, Chinese computer users' ideological relativism exerts a stronger influence on their software piracy attitude and behaviour than does their ideological idealism. The findings suggest that the government, and authentic software developers and vendors should focus on subjectivists as their target audience of anti-software piracy communications. These policy makers and practitioners should also make concerted efforts to help subjectivists better realise how their software piracy act may damage parties 'proximate' to themselves so as to lower the rate of software piracy.

Research on IT in China: A Call for Greater Contextualization

“…Software piracy is of global concern, especially in China. Therefore, it has received a great deal of research attention (Moores and Chang, 2006;Davison et al, 2009;Pykäläinen et al, 2009;Chan and Lai, 2011;Xu et al, 2012). Moreover, Martinsons and Ma (2009) Several studies examined various aspects of the Chinese IT industry (Damsgaard and Truex, 2000;Lee and Oh, 2006).…”

“…However, this does not mean there is a lack of interest in the cultural and organizational context. In fact, several papers in the other 21 themes investigated Chinese contextual factors either as independent variables (e.g., Chan and Lai, 2011) or moderating variables (e.g., Sia et al, 2009), or as a subject of rich description through qualitative research (e.g., Liang and Xue, 2004).…”

“…The weak legal system for protecting intellectual property led to a software piracy rate as high as 80% in 2008 (Chan and Lai, 2011), which presents a unique research opportunity for IS scholars (e.g., Moores and Chang, 2006;Pykäläinen et al, 2009;Chan and Lai, 2011). Moreover, for political reasons, Wikipedia is often blocked in China and Google search is censored by the government.…”

“…Through identifying contextual variables that may provide meaningful predictions of certain IT practices, researchers may make theoretical contributions by 'theorizing about context' to create context-effects theories (Tsui, 2009;Whetten, 2009). Exemplary research in our sample of papers includes Chan and Lai (2011), Lowry et al (2011, and Davison et al (2013).…”

“…For example, at the society level, the government blocks access to some websites hosted overseas for political reasons (Zhang and Wang, 2012); software piracy widely exists (Chan and Lai, 2011). At the individual level, 'guanxi' and 'face' are distinct characteristics of personal interaction among Chinese people including IT managers (Goffman, 1967;Farh et al, 1998).…”