Beyond the Freebie Mentality: A News User Typology of Reasonings About Paying for Online Content

ABSTRACT

Online news providers struggle to pull audiences behind their paywalls in order to complement (insufficient) advertising revenue with sales income. But what do consumers think about paying for—once freely available—online news content and how does it affect their payment behavior? The present study complements the existing research by developing a typology of attitudes and behavior toward paying for online news content based on qualitative interviews (n = 64) conducted in Germany. Five types of mindsets were identified: paying subscribers, free riders, promisers (users who do not pay but announce to do so in the future), occasional buyers, and convinced deniers. The typology organizes the diversity in positions toward paid news content, thus enabling a more powerful explanatory research on consumer valuation and monetization in journalism. In addition, it can assist online news providers in developing targeted strategies for converting online readers into purchasing customers.

KEYWORDS:

• Online news
• willingness to pay
• paid content
• qualitative interviews
• media economics
• typology
• news audiences

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Due to the fact that the interview data was anonymized and thus contains no identifiable private information, ethical clearance for this project was not necessary. All participants agreed to the publication of the results and gave their informed consent about participating.

2 The developed and used coding scheme is available from the authors upon request.

3 Authors’ own translation of quotes stated in the German interviews into English