• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.655-668
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• 2011

Although consumer ethical behavior related with illegal copies of digital software has been considered to be an important issue, not many studies have attempted to examine the issue. Firstly, this study attemped to explain the moral judgment and intention to make illegal copies of smart phone applications for college students. Secondly, psychological factors such as moral intensity and perceived risk related to making illegal copies were tested to be significantly different in individual characteristics such as experience of ethical education and past experience of making illegal copies of software, sex, age and household income. Thirdly, the effect of related factors such as psychological factors and individual characteristics was estimated to significantly influence moral judgment and intention to make illegal copies. Two step method(using LIMDEP program) was applied to estimate the model as a structural equation model. According to the results of this study, magnitude of consequences, financial risk and performance risk were found to be significantly different in income groups(less than middle class vs more than middle class). Prosecution risk was found to be significantly different in gender groups(female vs male). In addition, social consensus, financial risk, performance risk and prosecution risk were found to be significantly different in ethical education groups(experience vs no experience). Furthermore, moral judgment for making illegal copies of smart phone applications was found to be significantly influenced by income, ethical education, magnitude of consequences, temporal immediacy and social consensus. And intention to make illegal copies of smart phone applications was found to be significantly influenced by moral judgment, age, financial risk, performance risk and prosecution risk.