A comparison of a public and private university of the effects of low-cost streaming services and income on movie piracy.

This paper examines factors that affect online movie piracy activity. Specifically, the authors examine the impact of inexpensive legal streaming services, such as Netflix, and household family income as well as gender. A sample of college students at a private university, representing a more affluent population, are compared with students from a public institution. Initial findings indicate differences between the two samples. Lastly, although digital piracy is reduced among the samples, it does still exist suggesting a much more complex issue than previously thought. • Streaming service usage differs between the schools. • The use of illicit sources for movie piracy is not prevalent among sampled college students. • Ordinal regression found significant differences in the levels of piracy between men and women. • The data shows that the high usage of legal streaming services as whole has greatly reduced movie piracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]