Legal Compliance of Chinese Viewers and Opportunism of Online Video Platforms

For decades, there has been growing attention to copyright infringement issues in the Chinese digital entertainment industry. Under the stricter supervision and regulation of the Chinese government, Chinese video-on-demand (VOD) platforms are under pressure to compete for exclusive licensing. Even though the platforms endeavor to produce more original series and diversify revenue sources instead, they still need to invest in copyrighted videos to capture customers from rivals as well as retain them. Therefore, the platforms make opportunistic or even illegal moves which may generate profit but lower customer satisfaction. Despite the importance of the rising issues of online VOD platforms, research has not been conducted extensively. Therefore, we investigate the influences of legal compliance and opportunism on purchase intention of Chinese online VOD users in this study. Based on the literature, we develop hypotheses between legal compliance, opportunism, perceived value, brand loyalty, consumer satisfaction, and purchase intention and examine the relationships between them using structural equation models with survey data. All hypotheses are supported except for those with opportunism, indicating that legal compliance leads to purchase intention of online VOD users through perceived value, brand loyalty, and consumer satisfaction.