Perceived risk and digital piracy: a moderated-moderation model

Purpose This study aims to examine the joint moderating effects of privacy risk and time risk on the relationship between financial risk and intentions to pirate digital products. Design/methodology/approach The author collected data from 247 participants using a survey method. Subsequently, PROCESS macro was used to evaluate the proposed hypotheses. Findings This study found that financial risk does not have a significant relationship with the consumer intention to pirate digital products. However, privacy risk moderates the negative relationship between financial risk and consumers’ intention to pirate digital products, such that the negative relationship is stronger when privacy risk is high. Furthermore, time risk does not moderate the negative relationship between financial risk and consumers’ intention to pirate digital products. Lastly, it was found that privacy risk and time risk jointly moderate the negative relationship between financial risk and consumers’ intention to pirate digital products, such that the negative relationship is strongest when both privacy risk and time risk are high. Originality/value This study contributes to the digital piracy literature by understanding the extent of consumer predispositions when there are combined different types of perceived risks against their piracy decision.