Does opportunity make the thief? Abilities and moral disengagement in illegal downloading

Recent research has shown that typically law-abiding people perceive the act of illegal downloading as less unethical than other illegal acts. A major thrust of today's digital piracy research is indeed to understand how emerging social norms influence consumer perceptions and lead to rationalisations that justify antinormative behaviour despite moral and ethics. We adopt a model comparison approach to evaluate the impact of moral disengagement mechanisms with respect to the most often used constructs referring to the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and of moral obligation on intention to pirate. Comparisons between the tested models clearly indicate that moral disengagement plays a significant role in the prediction of piracy. The results also suggest that the practice of illegal downloading is spreading across genders, and that other than moral disengagement, demographic factors of young age, pirating experience, and pirating ability are strong predictors of illegal downloading. When moral disengagement mechanisms are included in the model, intention to pirate is explained by past piracy behaviour, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norms as well as the moral disengagement mechanism of ‘euphemistic labelling’. Our findings advance the current understanding of digital piracy and support the design of more effective interventions to counteract its further diffusion.