Publications [#166026] of Marc F Bellemare

Sanford Institute Working Papers

  1. M.F. Bellemare and A.M. Holmberg. "The Determinants of Music Piracy in a Sample of College Students."   (2010). [papers.cfm]
    (last updated on 2010/12/03)

    Abstract:
    Why do some individuals pay for digital music while others choose to pirate it? With the development and adoption of digital music, the music industry went through a profound transformation in the way music is consumed. With this transformation, digital music piracy has emerged as a crime of national scale and concern. Using survey data from a sample of undergraduate students at a Southern private university, we first estimate our respondents' willingness to pay (WTP) for digital music by way of a simple random pricing experiment. We then investigate the determinants of music piracy by regressing a dummy variable for whether a respondent's last downloaded song was obtained illegally on (i) our WTP estimate, used here as a source of artificial variation in the price of legal music; and (ii) the various transaction costs associated with the consumption of illegal music. We find that a respondent's WTP, her subjective assessment of the probability that she will face a lawsuit, and her degree of morality all have a negative impact on the likelihood that her last song was obtained illegally.

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