Infringing Use as a Path to Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment / Hong Luo, Julie Holland Mortimer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Luo, Hong.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Mortimer, Julie Holland.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25453.

NBER working paper series no. w25453

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Infringing Use as a Path to Legal Consumption

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

Copyright infringement may result from frictions preventing legal consumption, but may also reveal demand. Motivated by this fact, we run a field experiment in which we contact firms that are caught infringing on expensive digital images. Emails to all firms include a link to the licensing page of the infringed image; for treated firms, we add links to a significantly cheaper licensing site. Making infringers aware of the cheaper option leads to a fourteen-fold increase in the ex-post licensing rate. Two additional experimental interventions are designed to reduce search costs for (i) price and (ii) product information. Both interventions-immediate price comparison and recommendation of images similar to those infringed-have large positive effects. Our results highlight the importance of mitigating user costs in small-value transactions.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2019.