The Determinants of Music Piracy in a Sample of College Students

Marc Bellemare and Andrew M. Holmberg

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Why do some individuals pirate digital music while others pay for it? Using data on a sample of undergraduate students, we study the determinants of music piracy by looking at whether a respondent’s last song was obtained illegally or not. In doing so, we incorporate (i) the individual-specific transactions costs that constitute the effective price of illegal music; and (ii) individual willingness to pay (WTP) for digital music, which we elicit using a simple field experiment and which we use to control for the unobserved heterogeneity of preferences between respondents. Our empirical results indicate that a respondent’s subjective probability of facing a lawsuit and her degree of morality both have a negative impact on the likelihood that her last song was obtained illegally. These results are robust whether WTP is estimated parametrically or nonparametrically. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of our findings.

Keywords: Music Piracy; Transactions Costs; Subjective Expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D23 K11 K42 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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