We study a relationship between perceived price fairness and digital piracy. In a large-scale field experiment on customers of a leading ebook store, we employ the Bayesian truth serum to elicit the information on acquiring books from unauthorized sources (often referred to as digital piracy). We provide empirical evidence in support of the conjecture that willingness to “pirate” is associated with having experienced subjective overpricing. We propose and verify the relevance of two mechanisms behind this link: reactance theory and moral cleansing/licensing. The results indicate that pricing policy perceived as fair may reduce the scope for digital piracy.

中文翻译：

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数字盗版和对价格公平的看法：来自现场实验的证据

我们研究了感知价格公平性和数字盗版之间的关系。在对领先电子书店客户的大规模现场实验中，我们使用贝叶斯真值血清来获取有关从未经授权的来源（通常称为数字盗版）获取书籍的信息。我们提供了实证证据来支持“盗版”意愿与主观定价过高相关的猜想。我们提出并验证了此链接背后的两种机制的相关性：反应理论和道德清洗/许可。结果表明，被视为公平的定价政策可能会减少数字盗版的范围。