Illegal music downloading in Singapore from a behavioural economics perspective.

Abstract

This paper explores the motivation behind illegal music downloading in Singapore from a behavioural economic perspective. The individual’s illegal downloading activities can be likened to cheating the record companies by a small amount. As suggested by behavioural economists such as Dan Ariely, people’s decision to cheat by ‘a bit’ is determined by the internal and external rewards mechanism and they can increase the internal rewards by framing their actions in a more favourable manner. We will test whether this holds in the case of illegal music downloading by examining the impact of categorization on individual’s decision to download songs illegally. Data was collected through surveys and focus groups to have a look into people’s mind on illegal music downloading ex-ante. An experiment was also conducted to observe the impact of categorization ex-post. Using the findings, policy recommendations were put forward to change the incentive structure of illegal music downloading.