Abstract

With the decline of advertising revenue, local newspapers must shift their revenue sources from primarily advertising to deriving a larger share from subscription fees. Although existing studies on willingness to pay for online news have examined the determinants of people’s paying intent, this study focuses on what factors drive digital news subscribers’ decision to cancel their subscriptions. We propose a framework that illustrates the sources of negative experiences on news websites—namely the inferior good hypothesis, ad-interference hypothesis, and newsletter intervention hypothesis—and investigate how these elements of negative experiences and news reading behaviors are associated with subscription cancellations. We analyze clickstream data merged with subscriber payment data to investigate these associations from three local news sites. Our findings indicate that regularity of news reading, local news content, using ad blockers, and subscribing to certain newsletters are negatively associated with cancellation. These results provide news organizations with a road map for managing the user experience so that consumers will be more willing to pay for the news.

摘要

随着广告收入的下降，地方报纸的收入来源必须从主要的广告转向从订阅费中获得更大的份额。尽管现有关于在线新闻付费意愿的研究已经考察了人们付费意愿的决定因素，但本研究侧重于推动数字新闻订阅者决定取消订阅的因素。我们提出了一个框架来说明新闻网站上负面体验的来源——即劣等品假设、广告干扰假设和时事通讯干预假设- 并调查这些负面体验和新闻阅读行为的元素如何与订阅取消相关联。我们分析与订阅者支付数据合并的点击流数据，以调查来自三个本地新闻网站的这些关联。我们的研究结果表明，新闻阅读的规律性、本地新闻内容、使用广告拦截器和订阅某些时事通讯与取消负相关。这些结果为新闻机构提供了管理用户体验的路线图，以便消费者更愿意为新闻付费。