Previous research suggests that consumers perceive theft morally different from piracy. We hypothesize that the dissociation exists as a result of an aversion to cause immediate losses to others, which is dubbed second-person loss aversion. Study 1 shows that theft is considered distinctly immoral and attitudes towards piracy are more ambiguous. Study 2 demonstrates that the dissociation translates to how consumers would behave themselves. Study 3 and 4 demonstrates that consumers are more averse to causing immediate losses than appropriating a tangible good (Study 3) or causing foregone gains (Study 4). The studies combined show that extending loss aversion to second persons provides an unexplored explanation of the moral dissociation between
theft and piracy.