Internet music files: online shopping or illegal downloading? Opinions in a group of Italian university student

Nowadays there are important changea in how consumers listen music and in the music recording industry: CDs are less and less used and digital music files are increasingly listened (Eurostat, 2007). Consumers get digital music files through online shopping and/or by softwares allowing file sharing (i.e. eMule). Both practices are risky: in the first case consumers may be worried about the security of transmitting credit card number in online shopping (Bathnagar, Misra and Rao, 2000) and in the second case about the legal status of uploading and downloading music in file sharing (Reto, 2004). The aims of this research are: 1) to describe the perception of risk and justice, motivations, and intentions about getting music files by online shopping or file sharing software; 2) to test the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989) to investigate the acceptance and usefulness of file sharing softwares. Participants at the research are a group of 187 university students (75% female; age average=21.72; age standard deviation = 4.72; 55% use an MP3 player to listening file music). They compiled a questionnaire measuring: a) the perception of risk of negative events in online shopping (Mariani, Zappalà, 2001) and in downloading music by file sharing software; b) the perception of justice of getting music by file sharing software and also of other deviant behaviours; c) motivation and intention of buying online and using file sharing software to get music file in the future; d) finally, two scales, derived from TAM, measuring perceived usefulness and perceived easy of use of the two systems to get music file (Davis, 1989). Results show that participants think that online shopping of music files is riskier that getting music by file sharing softwares; getting music by illegal downloading is a behaviour more admissible than not paying a thicket in a bus or starting with red light or not paying taxes. Participants use file sharing software because it is easy and because CDs are too expensive. According to TAM model, the intention to use these softwares is correlated to the perceived usefulness and perceived easy of use of file sharing softwares.