The Impact of Christian Education and Curriculum on Illegal Media File Sharing Attitudes and Behavior

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ethics and economics behind file sharing and to empirically test the role a Christian education has on illegal file sharing. The empirical results are interesting and find that Christian education has no effect on ethical attitudes or actual stealing behavior, and suggest that faculty at Christian colleges and universities cannot assume that discussions about Christian principles and moral attitudes will automatically be seen in the student behavior that follows. Integration of faith perspectives into actual practice likely needs to be intentionally addressed with specific behavioral examples as the discussion points.