The impacts of digital content piracy and copyright protection policies when consumers are loss averse

Abstract

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Recent technological advances in digitization and online communications have enabled unauthorized reproduction and illegal file-sharing. However, controversies still exist over the impacts of digital content piracy and copyright protection policies. Using a game-theoretic framework, we examine the impacts of digital content piracy and copyright protection policies on product quality, firm profitability, consumer surplus, and social welfare when consumers exhibit loss aversion in the quality dimension. Specifically, consumers are initially uncertain about the product quality and will form an expectation, but once they buy the licensed product or use piracy, they know the actual product quality and compare it with their expectation. When consumers are loss averse, consumer propensity to an option is more negatively affected by product quality above the expectation than positively affected by product quality below the expectation. Our analysis shows that although piracy exerts a negative cannibalization effect in the absence of loss aversion, it can exert an additional positive information effect when the degree of loss aversion on the licensed product is higher than the degree of loss aversion on piracy. We find that when the information effect dominates the cannibalization effect, piracy can lead to a win-win situation for firm profitability and consumer surplus. Moreover, under certain circumstances, anti-protection policies can simultaneously raise product quality, firm profitability and consumer surplus. The rationale behind the positive impacts of piracy and anti-protection policies is rooted in the influences of loss aversion behavior on consumer purchase decisions. The results show that it is essential to quantify the degree of consumer loss aversion for firms in formulating pricing and quality strategies and for policymakers to develop copyright protection policies.</p>