The Profiles of Software Pirates among Tertiary Institutions in Singapore

Lydia L. Gan and Hian Chye Koh
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Lydia L. Gan: Division of Economics, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Hian Chye Koh: Division of Marketing & International Business, Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

No 508, Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series from Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre

Abstract: The study seeks to examine the perception of software piracy as well as to discover its underlying factors among Singapore’s three university communities. Some five hundred responses were gathered from students and staff. By means of cluster analysis and factor analysis, the results identify three clusters of pirate profiles as influenced by factors such as attitudes towards software publishers, general acceptance, convenience, and ethics. The decision tree method links each pirate profile to demographic and computer-related variables. It shows that while age is negatively related to software piracy, computer experience and computer usage demonstrates an ambiguous relationship to software piracy respectively. Further, the undergraduate students tend to be pirates more often than university employees, and the Malays tend to be less frequent pirates as compared to other races. It is hoped that the study will help the relevant policy makers to develop better strategies to protect and to enforce the intellectual property rights among the universities as well as in an increasingly knowledge-based economy such as Singapore.

Keywords: Software Piracy; Software Policy; Protection and Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights; Cluster Analysis; Factor Analysis. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K42 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2005-08
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