Infringement of intellectual property seems to be much more common than infringement of physical property. Intellectual property rights protect goods that are non-rival in consumption, while physical property rights protect rival goods. Nonrivalry implies that the owner suffers no direct harm from infringement. This could explain lower respect for property rights in nonrival goods. To test this hypothesis, we isolate the dimension of rivalry in an experiment. We develop a theft game that offers plausible deniability and minimizes experimenter demand. We find no evidence, either in behavior or in social norms, that participants’ respect for nonrival goods is lower than for rival goods. This suggests that the widespread infringement of intellectual property rights is not due to their nonrival nature. We examine this result in a vignette study and find that stealing a nonrival good is more socially acceptable when the user’s valuation is below the price of the good.

中文翻译：

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本质上遵守法律：物理财产与知识产权

知识产权侵权似乎比实物财产侵权更为常见。知识产权保护消费中非竞争性的商品，而实物产权则保护竞争性商品。非竞争性意味着所有者不会因侵权而遭受直接损害。这可以解释对非竞争性商品产权的较低尊重。为了检验这个假设，我们在实验中隔离了竞争的维度。我们开发了一种盗窃游戏，提供合理的推诿并最大限度地减少实验者的需求。我们没有发现任何证据，无论是在行为上还是在社会规范上，表明参与者对非竞争性商品的尊重低于对竞争性商品的尊重。这表明知识产权的广泛侵犯并不是由于其非竞争性。我们在一项小插曲研究中检查了这一结果，发现当用户的估值低于商品的价格时，窃取非竞争性商品更容易被社会接受。