شناخت پذیرش تصویب نرم افزار ضد سرقت ادبی : حفاظت توسعه ای از دیدگاه انگیزشی

This study investigates factors affecting the adoption of anti-plagiarism software. Using protection motivation theory as a basis, this research examines the influence of threat and coping appraisals, along with social influences, moral obligation, and actual control variables, on the adoption of anti-plagiarism software. A field survey of 218 faculty members working at U.S. public universities reveals that threat appraisals have a stronger influence on the adoption of anti-plagiarism software than do coping appraisals. The faculty members' moral obligation, academic rank, class size, percentage of creative assignments, and gender significantly affect software adoption, whereas social influence does not. Key implications for theory and practice are discussed

Despite continuing efforts to educate people that Internet plagiarism is improper behavior, the misuse of the Internet as a tool for research and writing appears to be growing at an overwhelming rate (e.g., [33]). One survey reports that almost 40% of college students admitted to engaging in Internet plagiarism in 2005, up 30% since 1999. The Educational Testing Service also reports that a single “paper mill” Web site averages 80,000 hits per day [8]. This problem likely will become even more rampant as a new generation of students, who largely regard information in cyberspace as public goods and are accustomed to downloading free music, enter college in the near future [34] and [46]. To cope with the epidemic of Internet plagiarism, many colleges and universities add to their formal honor codes, promote greater awareness programs, enact strong enforcement policies, and install anti-plagiarism software. Of these countermeasures, systematic detection using anti-plagiarism software provides a pertinent and effective method [33]. However, contrary to what might be expected, relatively few faculty members adopt anti-plagiarism software [21]. This study seeks to explain the large gap between faculty members' concern about the use of Internet plagiarism and their minimal adoption of preventative software. Some speculation suggests they might be reluctant to adopt anti-plagiarism software, but rigorous research has yet to identify the facilitators and inhibitors of faculty members' decisions to adopt. Previous studies mainly focus on students' motivation to commit Internet plagiarism, not on faculty's role in fighting and educating students about the topic [7]. In addition, previous researchers (e.g., [37]) treat protective systems (e.g., anti-virus software, wireless security) as similar to productivity-enhancing technologies (e.g., spreadsheets, e-mail) and use generic IT adoption theories to address their adoption. Adopting instead the stance that Internet plagiarism is a major threat to academic integrity, this study applies the protection motivation theory (PMT) [54] from health psychology and extends it to investigate factors that may affect the decision to adopt anti-plagiarism software. On the basis of a theoretical postulation of PMT, this study posits that faculty members will be more inclined to adopt anti-plagiarism software when they (1) perceive Internet plagiarism as a serious threat to upholding the standards of academic integrity, (2) are convinced that the software is an effective means of detecting and deterring the use of Internet plagiarism, and (3) believe they possess the capability to use the software. This study also attempts to extend the original PMT in several ways. First, it examines the nomological network (i.e. the interrelationships among and between research variables) that has been ignored in previous PMT studies and includes actual control variables that may significantly affect the adoption of anti-plagiarism software. This study examines the direct relationship between coping appraisals and the actual adoption of the software, as predicted in studies that rely on other theories, such as the theory of planned behavior [1] and the technology acceptance model [66], but not in previous PMT studies. Second, this study explores the effect of behavioral control variables, including academic rank, class size, percentage of essay-style assignments, gender, number of teaching assistants, years of employment, and teaching load, on the software adoption. Third, it examines the effect of moral obligation [37] and social influence [69] on faculty acceptance of anti-plagiarism software.

By adopting and extending PMT, this study investigates the facilitators and inhibitors associated with adopting anti-plagiarism software. In turn, it identifies several interesting findings worthy of further discussion. All threat appraisal and coping appraisal variables significantly affect faculty members' intentions to adopt anti-plagiarism software. That is, the decision of faculty members to adopt software is influenced by the perceived magnitude of the negative consequences of Internet plagiarism and its likelihood in their classes, as well as the expected benefits of adopting the anti-plagiarism software, their own capability to adopt the software, and the expected cost associated with the adoption. Two threat appraisal variables have particularly strong effects on intentions to adopt, which suggests that threat appraisals are more influential in the context of this study. Yet IT acceptance researchers have treated this software similar to a productivity-enhancing technology and adopted generic IT adoption theories to address its adoption, which meant they overlooked threat variables. Because the main objective of adopting protection systems appears to be an effort to reduce a threat, research should include threat variables to investigate the adoption of diverse protection systems. This model extension also examines whether coping appraisal variables might directly influence software adoption; only response efficacy, not self-efficacy and response cost, has a significant, direct influence on actual adoption. Therefore, faculty members appear motivated to adopt the software when they perceive a high expected return on investment; faculty awareness programs and educational materials pertaining to Internet plagiarism should emphasize the benefits of anti-plagiarism software adoption. The insignificance of the self-efficacy and response cost variables may reflect the stronger influence of the actual control variables compared with perceived control variables. The low correlation between self-efficacy and actual adoption (r = 0.102) and between response cost and actual adoption (r = − 0.087) indirectly supports this interpretation. Several actual control variables have significant direct influences on software adoption. The significant negative effect of academic rank suggests that the higher the rank of faculty members, the more reluctant they are to adopt the software. Faculty members with a higher academic rank tend to be somewhat older, more conservative, and less IT savvy, which may make them reluctant to adopt new technologies in their classes. The negative effect of class size on adoption seems counterintuitive though, in that smaller class sizes prompted more adoption. Faculty members who teach larger classes might not adopt the software because they employ curricula that are standardized and feature mostly non-essay assignments, for the sake of grading convenience. A significant negative effect of the percentage of creative assignments seems reasonable, considering the lower chances to plagiarize creative assignments such as programming or essay articles. Therefore, the demand for anti-plagiarism software declines when courses include many creative assignments. Finally, men are more likely to adopt the software, consistent with previous findings pertaining to IT adoption that show women are generally risk averse, more concerned with their capability to adopt new technology, and likely to avoid advanced technology [58]. Moral obligation facilitates the adoption of anti-plagiarism software; faculty members appear to consider Internet plagiarism a serious, morally incorrect behavior and feel pressure to adopt countermeasures. Not adopting the software might increase Internet plagiarism in the classroom, thus deteriorating overall academic integrity. Honest students recognize the Internet plagiarism committed with impunity by other students and feel a temptation to mimic such plagiarism. The debriefing interviews revealed an interesting moral dilemma for faculty with regard to adopting the software: They expressed serious concerns that the commercial anti-plagiarism software vendors might misuse the materials submitted to check for Internet plagiarism. To reduce this concern, diverse protection mechanisms that prevent the misuse of the software, including legal contracts with software vendor, should be enforced. In addition, the findings require some caution in their interpretation, in that adoption is a desirable behavior, but not adopting the software is not necessarily a morally incorrect behavior. Some faculty members may adopt different, equally effective means to prevent Internet plagiarism in their classes. Contrary to expectations, social influence has an insignificant effect, which implies that faculty members do not seriously consider others' adoption of or attitude toward anti-plagiarism software. Those in academe tend to value academic freedom and thus may make more independent decisions, even for important matters. The voluntary adoption of the software also might affect this insignificance finding, which would match previous IT acceptance studies [65]. This study contains several limitations. First, the faculty members come from two U.S. public universities, and though the respondents represent 15 diverse departments, it would be preferable to recruit subjects from more universities to generalize the findings of this study. In particular, recruiting subjects from colleges or universities that represent specific institutional types (e.g., teaching versus research-focused) or have a unique culture (e.g., religious versus secular school) could further generalize the findings. Second, this study does not examine the relationship between adoption and outcomes, namely, whether adoption reduces Internet plagiarism in the classroom. Longitudinal studies should investigate such complete nomological networks. In addition to research to address these limitations, several other promising research streams appear evident. For example, this study proposes and validates a theoretical model that adopts PMT to identify factors affecting the adoption of protective software and considers threat appraisal variables that have not been investigated previously. Without access to such theory, previous studies use general IT adoption theories to address the adoption of protective software, an approach that ignores important threat appraisal variables. The PMT offers a tool to understand an interesting phenomenon in a systematic way; the previous paucity of a theory of protective software adoption appears to relate directly to incomplete, inconsistent, or misleading understanding of the adoption phenomenon. Thus, the separate attention to developing theories for protective software adoption is worthwhile. As a part of the theory development, this study also has attempted to extend the original PMT theory and successfully demonstrates that the expanded model, with social influence, moral obligation, and actual control variables, explains much of the variance in the adoption of anti-plagiarism software. Thus, the model expansion appears to provide a valuable effort, and the expanded model can provide a theoretical foundation for protective actions in various behavioral contexts, including the adoption of protective software. This study also appears to be the first attempt to view the phenomenon of Internet plagiarism from the perspective of educators who play a critical role in counteracting it. In contrast with previous studies, primarily focused on understanding the motivation of students who committed Internet plagiarism, this investigation observes the same phenomenon from the perspective of faculty members who must cope with plagiarism by adopting countermeasures. The limits of attention to malicious actors rather than protectors has provoked considerable criticism in the IT security area; this study contributes to broaden attention to both the spear (e.g., hackers) and the shield (e.g., IT personnel) to discover more effective solutions to malicious actions. From a practitioner perspective, this study provides intriguing information to vendors of anti-plagiarism software and university administrations, which should prepare customized educational materials for faculty members that effectively address both the risk of Internet plagiarism and the efficacy of anti-plagiarism software. Because both threat and coping appraisals significantly affect the adoption of anti-plagiarism software, promotional campaigns should address both appraisals. More emphasis on threat appraisals could motivate the adoption of anti-plagiarism software more powerfully. Promotional materials also may be customized to attract faculty members according to the actual control factors that directly influence their adoption of the software. For example, for senior female faculty members, the campaign should include information emphasizing the ease of implementation. The findings of this study also might assist university administrators develop a strategy that increases adoption rates of the software. For example, the university might offer a one-to-one tutorial program for faculty members to enable their use of the software. To reduce the adoption costs perceived by faculty members, including deteriorated relationships with students and malicious use of submitted assignments, university administrations should provide an educational session for students, as part of their orientation programs, and institute a legal contract with software vendors to prevent any misuse of materials sent by faculty members. In summary, this study, by adopting and expanding the protection motivation theory, identifies several factors that motivate or inhibit faculty members' anti-plagiarism software adoption. By persuading and motivating faculty members to adopt the software, in connection to other initiatives to counteract Internet plagiarism, universities and colleges can maintain a higher degree of academic honesty.