Tjiptono, F., Arli, D.,

From Digital Culture & Society

The article Gender and Digital Privacy: Examining Determinants of Attitude Toward Digital Piracy Among Youths in an Emerging Market, by Fandy Tjiptono,, Denni Arli, and Viviea (2016), focuses on digital piracy in developing countries, specifically in Indonesia. The authors state that the present study aims to examine the determines of attitude towards digital piracy and they also explore if gender plays a part in explaining the attitudes of downloaders. The authors chose to focus on Indonesia because it has one of the highest rates of piracy in the world, where 86% of software in Indonesia is pirated, which according to the article results in a loss of US$1.46 billion per year. With that, online access in Indonesia has significantly expanded, with approximately 62 million Internet users in 2013 (more than 2012 when there were 55 million), and 282 million mobile phone owners. The article explains that in the past, many Indonesians were willing to buy original CDs, whereas now, most prefer to download music illegally online. The article urges that it is important to understand what might influence individuals to pirate music.

The article conducts a study that aims to examine the determinants of consumer attitude toward digital piracy among youths (university students) in Indonesia. This study specifically examines whether or not gender matters in explaining the attitudes towards digital piracy. The authors describe attitude towards digital piracy as an individuals favourable or unfavourable evaluation regarding pirating of any products that are digital. The authors also explain that gender socialization theory suggests that the differences in socialization are what contributes to the different perceptions of ethical issues between females and males. According to the article, males are more socialized to emphasize the traits of equity and fairness, while females are socialized to focus on empathizing with people and maintaining close relationships with others. The article mentions that many other studies found that females show less favourable attitudes towards digital piracy, but some studies also conclude that there is an insignificant difference between the genders. This leads to the hypothesis that the authors have, about how males will have a more positive attitude towards digital piracy than females. The other hypotheses that the authors came up with have to do with five elements: cognitive beliefs, affective beliefs, perceived importance of digital piracy, moral judgement, and Machiavellianism, and how these elements have a positive or negative attitude towards digital piracy.

The sample that the authors used to conduct the study was a self-administrated questionnaire, that was distributed to a sample of 282 students, ages 18-20, in four major universities in the Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta (DIY) province, Indonesia. The purpose of selecting students for the study is for two main reasons according to the article. The first is that there is a significantly high proportion of students who have shown to engage in digital piracy. The second is that student samples have been considered as adequate and representative of business communities and have been used in ethics literature to investigate software and online piracy involving music. The authors include a section about the measures, where they explain that all the scales that were used in the study were adopted from established measures. The finding from the study show that male respondents actually do have a significantly more favorable attitude towards digital piracy than female counterparts, therefore the first hypothesis was supported. Empirical studies have found that support for the positive effect of attitude towards digital piracy on an individuals attempt to pirate this digital material. They mention that even though other studies used attitude as an antecedent, it is argued that the attitude towards digital piracy is equally important. This study aimed to analyze the antecedents of youth in Indonesia as costumers and their attitudes toward digital piracy, while also examining whether gender plays in affect towards the attitude of illegal downloading. Overall, the results from this study determine that it supports gender socialization theory, suggesting that females and males attain different attitudes and perceptions towards ethical issues due to their differences in socialization, in which it was discovered that males do have a more positive attitude towards digital piracy than females.