Economic Perspectives on Piracy Preference: A Systematic Literature Review of Copyright Violation and Related Factors

The widespread use of digital technology facilitates unauthorized access to copyrighted works. Various disciplines have studied the determinants of piracy since the early 1980s. Based on the different conceptual frameworks, diverse relevant components of piracy preference are under investigation. While some frameworks such as the Theory of Reasoned Action offer consistent choices of variables across studies, some frameworks are more flexible regarding the variable choices. Therefore, it is necessary for a literature review to collect and organize the diverse factors. This research applies a systematic review methodology to discern the research trends toward piracy determinants and adopt an economics framework to analyze current empirical evidence on piracy behavior determinants. The research established a corpus of 85 interdisciplinary studies withdrawn from Scopus and Web of Science using both automatic and manual screening methods. Through descriptive analysis, the review reveals the peak of the research interest in piracy determinants occurs in 2008 with research topics diversifying in subsequent years. The geographic distribution of the target area is unbalanced, the student sample is the most common sample choice, and the most popular theoretical frameworks are those based on economics and psychology theories. There is also a wide range of research methods included in the corpus papers, but the major methods are quantitative analysis based on survey data. By integrating the demand model with the psychological theories, this research identifies eight determinants impacting piracy preference including state-imposed costs; socially imposed costs; self-imposed costs; search costs; price; information; valuation; related goods, and characteristic factors. The results show that an extended demand framework could explain most of the cross-disciplinary variables. Determinants like price, search costs, state-imposed costs, socially imposed costs, and self-imposed costs are usually supported by interdisciplinary evidence while determinants that have complex impact mechanisms like age and gender usually have ambiguous results. The systematic literature review shows that piracy is a complicated consumption choice that is caused by the aggregation of multiple individual and social factors. Regarding future studies, contents other than music and software require more academic attention. More research should focus on developing countries in Africa or South America. The research advises futural analysis to be based on more rigorous frameworks, carefully choose the variables, and include more intervariable correlation into consideration.