“I Believe”, “I Think”, then “I Will”? Investigating the Mediator Role of Ethical Judgment between internet ethical self-efficacy and ethical behavioral intention

Abstract Internet ethics is an issue that has garnered the attention of civic education. Integrating the foundation of social cognitive theory with the perspectives of the ethical decision making (EDM) model, we investigated whether a mediation effect is present between high school student's internet self-efficacy (IESE), internet ethical judgment (IEJ), and internet ethical behavioral intention (IEBI) under two scenarios: piracy and internet plagiarism. Using high school students in the Taiwan region as our research subjects, a total of 331 valid samples were collected. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to verify the hypothesis. The results of the study show that IEJ has an indirect-only mediation effect between IESE and IEBE in the piracy scenario, but a complementary mediator effect in the internet plagiarism scenario. In other words, IEJ exerts different mediation effects under different internet ethical scenarios. These results provide social cognitive theory a new insight on individual ethical judgment in different contexts. The present study provides important theoretical and practical implications for internet ethics education.