THE FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO INTERNET PLAGIARISM AMONG ACCOUNTING STUDENT IN UNIVERSITY TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

Abstract

The existence of the Internet has made people life easier and more comfortable, and it has become one of the key drivers of social evolution. The Internet has also fostered the development of many new activities and services that are meant to facilitate new kinds of social interactions that were not previously possible. Hence, the use of Internet use is becoming more prevalent all around the world. The existence of the Internet has become more useful during the era of Covid 19 pandemic whereby teaching is mostly undertaken remotely and on digital platforms. However, the use of the Internet can also bring negative impacts to students. One of the disadvantages of the Internet is the fact that it can become a tool for students to cheat and to perform plagiarism more easily. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to discover the factors that influence plagiarism activities among accounting students in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. A quantitative study was conducted to collect and analyse data. Respondents were chosen using simple random sampling and questionnaires were distributed to 190 accounting students. The findings show that there are five main factors; lack of awareness, personal attitudes, availability of Internet resources, lack of competency, and pressure that contribute to plagiarism among the students. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of promoting ethical values and academic honesty in more aggressive ways among the students. The study also recommends a bigger size of sample, which consists of students from various degree programmes, for future study in order to obtain better results.