The cognitions and Affects of Moral attitude toward Software Piracy Intention

Internet proliferation and ubiquity are easing the process for individuals to copy, download, share, sell and distribute copyrighted software without purchasing a legal license. The prevalent piracy issue has not only caused a tremendous loss of revenues for legal software makers, but also raised piracy ethicality. The current study shows that moral attitude is one of important predictors for piracy intention. The purpose of this study is to increase its predictive power by including two planned behaviour constructs from the perspective of cognitive and affective beliefs. Based on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, a conceptual framework is proposed to include perceived likelihood of punishment and perceived benefit as cognitive beliefs and perception of shame, happiness and excitement as affective beliefs.