The Impact of Residence Environment on Consumer's Adoption of Unauthorized Copies in the Netherlands

The value of copyright goods, as a specific product, cannot be consumed or reduced through one time use, as is the case with public goods or experience goods; that is to say, copyright goods can be copied or shared by any individual consumer without authorization. Because of this characteristic of copyright goods, an empirical study of consumer’s behavior in the copyright domain must be complex and multi-faceted; this study seeks to investigate not only how individual’s and group’s select and purchase products, but it will also look at how consumers dispose of copyright products after consumption. One of the fundamental premises of consumer behavior is that people tend to correct their behaviors (or attitudes) according to common goals of groups or societies. Many previous studies have shown that cultural environment is a crucial external influence on the behavior of consumers (e.g., Arnould and Price, 1993; Hebdige, 2000; Solomon and Bamossy, 2006). In addition, within a specific culture, the purchase decision making or preference of individual’s will also be affected by their social networks; for instance, reference groups and residence groups are two significant external factors which determine an individual’s purchasing preference or attitude formation to particular goods. Accordingly, this cross-cultural study aims to explore in what way external factors influence how individual Chinese students use unauthorized copies in the Netherlands. The main purpose of this study is to focus on investigating how individual’s piracy behavior changes within different social groups and ideological environments. In order to answer this question, a quantitative method can be applied to analyze and test our hypotheses. The results of this investigation will show us not only the present status of the purchasing behavior of individual Chinese student’s concerning unauthorized copies, but it will also show how the behavior of these student towards piracy in the Netherlands is changing.