SOCIAL DESIRABILITY BIAS IN SOFTWARE PIRACY RESEARCH

Most behavioural aspects of software piracy research are a subset of ethical research. Measures of ethical behaviour in research may be subject to biases in response to the social desirability of behaviours. Few studies in the area of software piracy have explicitly addressed this issu. Literature on social desirability bias (SDB) reports on three ways to address response bias: approaches to reduce bias, approaches to detect bias, and approaches to correct bias. In the current article, the published methods to reduce, detect, and, correct bias are reviewed. Then, the extent of SDB that may be present in the published software piracy literature is subjectively assessed. A study is proposed in which piracy behaviours involving real money are compared to the intent to pirate in paper-based scenarios, under equivalent conditions. The comparison is argud to be useful in compensating for SDB in future research

Communities and beyond: mesoscopic analysis of a large social network with complementary methods

Community detection methods have so far been tested mostly on small empirical networks and on synthetic benchmarks. Much less is known about their performance on large real-world networks, which nonetheless are a significant target for application. We analyze the performance of three state-of-the-art community detection methods by using them to identify communities in a large social network constructed from mobile phone call records. We find that all methods detect communities that are meaningful in some respects but fall short in others, and that there often is a hierarchical relationship between communities detected by different methods. Our results suggest that community detection methods could be useful in studying the general mesoscale structure of networks, as opposed to only trying to identify dense structures.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures. V2: typos corrected, one sentence added. V3: revised version, Appendix added. V4: final published versio

A Cross-National Experimental Examination of Software Piracy Behavior

Software piracy has been a problematic issue for several decades. While there is a significant body of research attempting to identify reasons why individuals pirate software, some factors influencing software piracy have yet to be studied completely. One such factor, addressed herein, is differences across countries. Cross-country comparisons of self-report rates of software piracy and aggregate rates of piracy have been published. Such studies have shown that software piracy rates vary by country. Explanations of these differences have been based on country level variables, such as gross national product (GDP). However, we are not aware of any study that has examined the role of social and individual factors to explain cross-country differences. We plan to examine the role of social desirability bias (SDB) as a possible explanatory factor for differences in reports of software piracy behavior in two countries: the United States and the United Arab Emirates

Specifični problemi razvoja turizma na područjima rijeke Drave u Mađarskoj

The Dráva Region is one of the poorest areas in Hungary, which, on the other hand, is also one of the richest as regards its natural endowments and boasts of heritage and ethnographic values as well. Also, the cooperation with the neighbouring Croatia can give new development impetus to the region (it is a possibility far underutilised and in some cases quite mishandled to date). Despite the huge amounts of financial support, it is only excursionists that have been attracted to the region in relatively considerable numbers, whereas the number of tourists and guest nights spent by them still remain very low. The potential of tourism in rural development has been recognised for long in Hungary as well, and it is seen especially important tool in regions handicapped from socio-economic aspects where the chances or other economic activities are few. Border regions, coming from their isolation, are often in handicapped situation, and this allowed them to preserve those natural and cultural values that may be the foundations of special sorts of non-mass tourism (ecotourism and other green tourism activities). The Dráva Region, including one of the most infamous and impoverished micro-regions of Hungary, the Ormánság, is a good example of such a region. The paper analyses the problems and gives recommendations for the improvement of tourism cooperations.Područje uz rijeku Dravu jedno je od najsiromašnijih područja u Mađarskoj, no ujedno i jedno od najbogatijih s obzirom na svoja prirodna bogatstva, a može se pohvaliti kako baštinom, tako i etnografskim vrijednostima. Također, suradnja sa susjednom Hrvatskom pruža mogućnost za dodatni zamah u razvoju ovoga područja (to je mogućnost koja je do danas nedovoljno iskorištena i u nekim slučajevima prilično loše upotrijebljena). Usprkos ogromnim iznosima financijske potpore, samo su izletnici privučeni u ovo područje u relativno značajnom broju, dok je broj turista i noćenja i dalje vrlo nizak. Potencijal turizma u ruralnom razvoju prepoznat je već prije dosta vremena u Mađarskoj, a smatra se posebno važnim alatom u područjima hendikepiranim sa socijalno-ekonomskog aspekta gdje su prilike ili druge ekonomske aktivnosti male. Granična područja, koja su izolirana, često su na određeni način hendikepirana, što im je omogućilo da sačuvaju one prirodne i kulturne vrijednosti koje bi mogle biti temelj posebnih vrsta nemasovnog turizma (ekoturizam i druge aktivnosti zelenog turizma). Područje uz Dravu, uključujući jednu od najzloglasnijih i najsiromašnijih mikroregija u Mađarskoj, Ormánság, dobar je primjer takvog područja. U radu se analiziraju problemi i daju preporuke za unapređenje turističke suradnje