User Decisions in a (partly) Digital World: Comparing Digital Piracy to Legal Alternatives for film and Music

Technologies enabling digital piracy have expanded the variety of options available to users when deciding how to access a product. As a result, access-mode decisions for film and music are broader than for other goods where the piracy option is not as prevalent. This paper presents a model of access-mode decisions for film and music which integrates elements of previous digital piracy models and expands upon them to reflect the decision’s complexity. We depict the access-mode decision as being influenced by the user’s product desire, price perceptions, perceived risks, internal regulators of behaviour, resources and legal availability. We test the model for film and music using causal data of access-mode decisions collected from students at two Danish universities. Our findings indicate that the economic considerations of price perception and legal availability are the most consistent factors in influencing the access-mode decision across different legal options. The paper concludes with an outline for future research.