Watson, Zizzo and Fleming (2015)
Contents
Source Details
| Watson, Zizzo and Fleming (2015) | |
| Title: | Determinants of Unlawful File Sharing: A Scoping Review |
| Author(s): | Watson, S. J., Zizzo, D. J., Fleming, P. |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Citation: | Watson SJ, Zizzo DJ, Fleming P (2015) Determinants of Unlawful File Sharing: A Scoping Review. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127921. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127921 |
| Link(s): | Definitive , Open Access |
| Key Related Studies: | |
| Discipline: | |
| Linked by: | Fleming, Parravano and Zizzo (2016), Watson, Zizzo and Fleming (2016) |
| About the Data | |
| Data Description: | These results come from a scoping review on the determinants and implications of UFS of digital media consumed for entertainment, initially defined as music, film, television, electronic games, books and pornography. Our search strategy maximised the breadth of literature regarding UFS from English language academic and grey literature. “Grey literature” refers to any research not published in academic journals. For example government or industry reports, as well as academic research that has not been published.Keywords were developed that combined a range of methods of sharing with relevant types of content that could be shared.
Due to search string incompatibility a reduced search was performed in the Westlaw database. It was “(piracy OR file sharing) AND (music OR books OR video games OR film OR television OR pornography)”. To capture pre-publication articles, the database of working papers “Social Science Research Network” was searched for the past four full years (2009–2013) using the keywords “file sharing” and “piracy”. This database does not support Boolean operators and the two searches were run separately and manually combined. Searches were performed and articles extracted from the 20th to 27th of February 2013. One author (SJW) screened the titles of all identified articles. After excluding obviously irrelevant articles, two authors (SJW and PF) independently screened a random sample of 100 abstracts for inclusion. A large majority of the initially identified studies were excluded, this is common when searches are highly sensitive (12). Fig 1 summarizes the inclusion and exclusion process for all articles identified through electronic databases. Reasons for excluding 134 articles at full text review were, not being an empirical study (46), not being relevant (43), being a duplicate publication (37), only examining exchanges which included a financial transfer (7), and one study was excluded for being in a foreign language. This left 195 articles to be included in the review, though only 192 were useable. Three studies did not provide data that could be synthesized into any of the categories of our conceptual framework and so were not used further. They only compared UFS attitudes and behavior depending upon occupation (20), provided a typology of those that UFS but without presenting sufficient information for the individual factors that determined this typology to be extracted and combined with similar studies (21), or else provided insufficient description of the variables included in their model to permit accurate classification of included factors (22). One hundred and twenty-two reports were identified from the grey literature, of which 108 were excluded. The reasons for exclusion were not being empirical (48), not being relevant (43), being a duplicate publication of an already identified article (13), only examining exchanges of media which included a financial transfer (2), and being published in a foreign language (2). This included an additional 14 articles in the review. Therefore the final number of studies included in the review is 192 + 14 = 206. |
| Data Type: | Primary and Secondary data |
| Secondary Data Sources: | |
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| Country(ies): | |
| Cross Country Study?: | No |
| Comparative Study?: | No |
| Literature review?: | Yes |
| Government or policy study?: | No |
| Time Period(s) of Collection: |
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| Funder(s): |
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Abstract
We employ a scoping review methodology to consider and assess the existing evidence on the determinants of unlawful file sharing (UFS) transparently and systematically. Based on the evidence, we build a simple conceptual framework to model the psychological decision to engage in UFS, purchase legally or do nothing. We identify social, moral, experiential, technical, legal and financial utility sources of the decision to purchase or to file share. They interact in complex ways. We consider the strength of evidence within these areas and note patterns of results. There is good evidence for influences on UFS within each of the identified determinants, particularly for self-reported measures, with more behavioral research needed. There are also indications that the reasons for UFS differ across media; more studies exploring media other than music are required.
Main Results of the Study
We presented a conceptual framework that considers the decision of a consumer to engagein unlawful downloading, purchase a legal copy or do nothing, depending on the utilities obtained from five interacting sources: legal and financial, experiential, technical, social and moral utility. This framework enables us to represent the studies on the determinants of UFS along the three dimensions of a ‘cubic’ space, where the dimensions are the net utility source, the market medium and the outcome measure. We find a complex relationship between UFSand purchasing, limitations for legal influence, but alternative social, moral, technical and experiential avenues of influence for which more research would be useful, as would be for media other than music files, and particularly videogames, books, or TV content.
Policy Implications as Stated By Author
Coverage of Study
Datasets
| Sample size: | 206 |
| Level of aggregation: | Studies |
| Period of material under study: | 2013 |
