A comparative study of college students’ ethical perception concerning internet piracy

As the rapid development in information technology (IT), and as the ease of disseminating IT between internet users throughout the world, internet piracy is a global issue that everyone has to be concerned about as it has a significant impact on the economy. In the global IT industry, Taiwan and China play important roles in the manufacturing supply chain. Unfortunately, both Taiwan and China also have significant effect on the IT piracy. Both of them share a similar culture and speak almost same language but different living style and social values. Since many studies reported that digital piracy (i.e. illegal downloading of music) was highly prevalent among college students (Lysonski and Durvasula, J Consumer Mark 25(3):167–178, 2008 ), understanding the college students’ ethical decision process is one of important issues in internet piracy context. The purpose of this study was to examine whether there is a difference in the perception of moral intensity as well as the ethical decision process for the business students between Taiwan and China. Respondents were asked to the dimensionality of the moral intensity and decision making process construct in three ethical scenarios regarding to internet piracy. The research results find that students in Taiwan possess higher level of moral intensity than students in China. Except for moral recognition, there are significant differences on the perception of moral decision process between two countries. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013