Wednesday 12 September 2012

Spotlight on predictive factors: Age

We've looked at gender.. now it's time to consider age.

And yup, you guessed it. It's those pesky youngsters who are more likely to engage in music piracy.

Honing in on just one key study, demographic factors were explored by Mishra, Akman and Yacizki (2006) where age and experience were defined as predictive factors of digital piracy.

Why might this be? Are older people merely less likely to engage in piracy as they lack computer experience? Or is there something more complicated going on?

Age as a predictor is far from a consistent finding, where the majority of studies have focussed on student populations. As such, the trend may be slightly skewed. Furthermore, not every study exploring age has come to the same conclusion. 

It does sound intuitive, where anecdotally, there are a few obvious reasons why music pirates may well be predominantly younger. You may be able to think of some new ones. 

The UK government certainly seems to be hung up on 'young people', with Lord Peter Mandelson (the then Business Secretary) stating: “The fact that young people now expect to download content for free is morally as well as economically unstable” (BBC, 2009).

What do you think?

Ask around. Do you notice any consistent age differences?

References

BBC (2009). Net pirates to be 'disconnected'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8328820.stm 

Mishra, A., Akman, I. and Yazici, A. (2006). Software piracy amongst IT professionals in organizations. International Journal of Information Management, 26(5), 402-413.


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