Understanding consumer ethical decision making with respect to purchase of pirated software

This paper examines the influence of consumers’ moral intensity, perceived risks and moral judgment on their purchase intention of pirated software. The aspects of moral intensity include magnitude of consequence, social consensus, probability of effect and temporal immediacy. The perceived risks of consumers are related to financial, performance, prosecution and social risks. Moral judgment is based on cognitive moral development and reasoning. Ten hypotheses were developed and tested with data collected using a scenario‐based questionnaire. A hierarchical regression analysis is used to control for variations that are attributed to factors such as gender, age, educational attainment, income, price levels and past software experience of consumers. Results revealed that consumer purchase intention is influenced by certain aspects of their perceived moral intensity, magnitude of consequence, temporal immediacy and social consensus; perceived risks, financial, prosecution and social; and moral judgment, cognitive moral development and moral reasoning. Applicability and implication of the findings as well as suggestions for further research are discussed.