Infringing Use, Search Costs, and Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Last registered on August 21, 2018

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Infringing Use, Search Costs, and Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0003238

Initial registration date

August 20, 2018

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

August 21, 2018, 12:35 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Hong Luo

Affiliation

Harvard Business School

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Julie Holland Mortimer

PI Affiliation

Boston College and NBER

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2017-11-15

End date

2017-12-22

Keywords

Other

Additional Keywords

Search costs, information provision, demand discovery, copyright infringement, piracy

JEL code(s)

O34, C93, D83, L15

Secondary IDs

Abstract

Motivated by the observation that infringing use of content reveals demand and that infringement may result from frictions preventing legal consumption, we contact infringers of expensive digital images and direct them toward a cheaper product. Two interventions are designed to
reduce search costs for (i) price and (ii) product information.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Luo, Hong and Julie Holland Mortimer. 2018. "Infringing Use, Search Costs, and Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment." AEA RCT Registry. August 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3238-1.0

Former Citation

Luo, Hong and Julie Holland Mortimer. 2018. "Infringing Use, Search Costs, and Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment." AEA RCT Registry. August 21. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3238/history/33311

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2017-11-15

Intervention End Date

2017-12-04

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Licensing outcomes of digital images, including whether or not a license is purchased and, if so, revenue generated.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

There are six groups in total: two control groups and four treatment groups. Emails to the two control groups offer only the option of licensing the infringed premium image currently displayed on the firm's (commercial) website. Emails to all the treatment groups add a cheaper micro-stock licensing option, in addition to the premium option. Two interventions are designed to provide the (i) price and (ii) product information.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Done by a random number generator in Stata

Randomization Unit

Firm

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

24680 infringing firms

Sample size: planned number of observations

24680 infringing firms

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

2904 (control group, without premium-image price information); 2912 (control group, with premium-image price information); 2906 (treatment group, without premium-image price information and without image recommendations); 6522 (treatment group, without premium-image price information but with image recommendations); 2912 (treatment group, with premium-image price information but without image recommendations); 6524 (treatment group, with premium-image price information and with image recommendations)

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB