An empirical study of software piracy among tertiary institutions in Singapore

We used a survey technique at Singapore's three universities to examine perceptions of software piracy and to attempt to discover its underlying factors. About 500 responses were gathered from students and staff. By means of cluster and factor analysis, we were able to identify three groups that had been influenced by attitudes towards software publishers, general acceptance, convenience, and ethics. A decision tree method linked each pirate profile to demographic and computer-related variables. It showed that, while age was negatively related to software piracy, computer experience or computer usage demonstrated an ambiguous relationship to software piracy. Moreover, older respondents who used university software mainly at their workplace tended to pirate less frequently, while students tended to be pirates more often than university employees. Also Malays were the least frequent pirates in all the Singapore ethnic groups.