The Determinants of Digital Piracy Behaviour in Malaysia

Cham, Kai Sin (2022) The Determinants of Digital Piracy Behaviour in Malaysia. Final Year Project (Masters), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

As computer technologies advances, such as developments in media encoding and widespread use of Internet connectivity by the general public, it enables digital piracy. Technology has facilitated sustainable and significant development in supporting digitalisation of business operations, including but not limited to electronic commerce, resulting in a significant increase in digital crimes, particularly online piracy. Many consumers seek out pirated content knowingly and the majority do not perceive it as something that could eventually harm the creative industry or perceive it as a wrong practice. Therefore, online piracy becomes rampant in every country. Most researches in the past mainly focused on examining digital piracy intention in China, Indonesia and Portugal rather than study actual behaviour, yet they had neglected to determine the actual digital piracy behaviour of internet users in the Malaysian context. Therefore, this research is to fill the gap by investigating the actual digital piracy behaviour in the Malaysian context. In addition, this research also fills the gap by adding the deviant peer associations as a social factor in determining the online piracy behaviour through the mediation role of attitude on the intention of online piracy by using social learning theory. This research investigates the direct and indirect relationship between deviant peer associations, perceived benefits, attitude towards digital piracy, subjective norms, selfefficacy, digital piracy intention and actual digital piracy behaviour. To carry out the research objectives, 450 samples were gathered via an online self-administered questionnaire survey and this research adopts Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to evaluate the data gathered. According to the statistical findings, all of the direct relationships and indirect relationships between deviant peer association, perceived benefits, attitude towards digital piracy, subjective norms, self-efficacy, digital piracy intention and actual digital piracy behaviour are significantly supported. With the findings of this study, this study provides theoretical and managerial implications by demonstrating that digital piracy intention has a significant relationship on actual digital piracy behaviour as well as deviant peer associations have a significant relationship on an individual’s attitude towards digital piracy. The research concludes with some limitations and recommendations for future studies to better investigate the understanding of the digital piracy research.