Why people don’t pay for news: A qualitative study

Introduction

Interviewer: Is there anything stopping you from getting a subscription?

Getting users to pay for news remains a key challenge in journalism. With advertising revenues dwindling, news organizations have become increasingly dependent on reader revenue. Willingness to pay for news, however, remains low. This is especially true for digital news: Newman et al. (2021: 14) found that across 20 countries, only 17% of users said they paid for online news, up a mere five percentage points since 2016. Meanwhile, print readership has seen a steep decline over the last decades (Newman et al., 2021). This raises questions about the viability of journalism. Carson (2015: 1037) argues news organizations are in “a purgatorial space” between digital and print: digital subscriptions do not generate enough revenue to abandon print, yet also cannibalize print subscriptions. Even if digital subscriptions rates are slowly growing –more so for big players like The New York Times and The Washington Post – Chyi and Ng (2020) found that in the US, they only contribute 3% of reader revenue. This paper asks: “What considerations do news users have for (not) paying for print and digital news?”

The paper aims to make three contributions to the existing literature on paying intentions. First, it takes an in-depth look at news users’ underlying reasons for (not) paying for news as situated in an everyday context, by providing them with access to a news subscription. O’Brien et al.’s (2020) systematic literature review revealed that “almost none of the papers examine the underlying consumer needs and motives” (p. 666), as research is typically focused on identifying factors influencing paying intention or willingness to pay (e.g., Chyi and Ng, 2020; Fletcher and Nielsen, 2017; Goyanes, 2014; O’Brien et al., 2020). For this study, participants received a three-week newspaper subscription of choice and were interviewed about overall experiences and considerations regarding paying for news. As such, rather than capturing their general attitudes toward paying for news, the study grounds people’s reasons for (not) paying for news in their actual experiences with having access to a news subscription (cf. Groot Kormelink, 2020).

Second, relatedly, the paper zooms in on people that are relatively likely potential newspaper subscribers. Whereas research often focuses on a general public’s attitudes toward paying for news, participants of this study had at least some interest in receiving a newspaper subscription. Documenting the experiences of relatively interested news users (cf. Goyanes et al., 2022), this paper’s findings may help news media more specifically target and develop subscription strategies toward potential subscribers rather than people who wouldn’t consider subscribing to news in the first place.

Third, this paper focuses on people’s considerations regarding paying for both print and digital news. Understandably – given the comparatively low paying intentions for online news – research in recent years has focused mainly on paying for digital news (e.g., Chyi and Ng, 2020; Fletcher and Nielsen, 2017; Goyanes, 2014; O’Brien et al., 2020). In the Netherlands, payment for online news grew to 17% (+3) in 2021, which is also the average of the twenty countries Newman et al. (2021) tracked. Among those paying for online news, digital-only news subscriptions (36%, up from 26% in 2019) overtook print/digital-bundles (31%, down from 44% in 2019) (Lauf and Brennecke, 2021). Still, while the future of journalism may indeed be digital, orientations toward paying for print news remain important to explore, as – for the time being – print circulations and revenues continue to be substantial for (legacy) news organizations (Chyi and Ng, 2020; Thurman and Fletcher, 2018). Indeed, in 2020, Dutch national print newspaper reach grew by 2% (Grimm, 2021). However, the distinction between print and digital subscriptions is rather blurry, as many newspapers offer subscriptions types that combine print delivery and digital access. It is worth exploring how news users orient themselves towards these different subscription types.

Paying for news: Literature review

Research on paying for news has focused predominantly on intentions or willingness to pay, especially for online news (e.g., Chyi and Ng, 2020; Fletcher and Nielsen, 2017; Goyanes, 2014; O’Brien et al., 2020). In their systematic literature review, O’Brien et al. (2020) identified 17 variables that influence past payment (PP), paying intent (PI, whether people would pay) and willingness to pay (WTP, how much people would pay), categorized into consumer-based, product-based and economic factors. Whereas "gender (being male), education, media use, news interest, format/medium (print or bundle), customization/personalization, (perceived) quality, specialization/niche (e.g., local) and income" had a positive impact on PP, PI and/or WTP, “age, price and free mentality” had a negative impact (O’Brien et al., 2020: 663). Price had the strongest individual effect (O’Brien et al., 2020).

For this paper on people’s considerations for (not) paying for news, several patterns, nuances and contradictions in the existing literature are particularly relevant. First, age plays a somewhat contradictory role. Although young people are less likely to be interested in news (Newman et al., 2021), they are more likely to (be willing to) pay for online news (Chen and Thorson, 2021; Chyi and Lee, 2013; Fletcher and Nielsen, 2017). For instance, in the Netherlands, interest in news among age groups 18–24 and 55+ is respectively 56% and 67%, whereas use of paid online news services is respectively 38% and 9% (Lauf and Brennecke, 2021). At the same time, younger people are more likely to consume digital news in the first place: online media are the main news source for 42% of people aged 18–24, but only for 19% of people aged 55+ (Lauf and Brennecke, 2021). It is perhaps not surprising that those who rely more on digital news also have a higher willingness to pay for it. Indeed, people with higher levels of news consumption pay more for news (Chen and Thorson, 2021) and are also less likely to cancel their subscription (Kim et al., 2021a). However, higher use doesn’t fully explain younger people’s greater likeliness to pay for digital news: in the Netherlands, among slightly older age groups 25–34 and 35–44, online media are also the main news source (both 44%), yet respectively only 31% and 21% have paid for news in the past year (Lauf and Brennecke, 2021).

An alternative explanation for younger people’s greater likeliness to pay for news is that they are more familiar with paying for online (media) services like Spotify and Netflix. Fletcher and Nielsen (2020: 3451) suggest the latter may have created “a nonzero reference price for online news […], ultimately leading to a process of market conditioning through the normalization of online news payment.” It is also not unthinkable that they believe they pay for news (podcasts or videos) as part of their Spotify, Netflix or YouTube subscription. Regarding age differences, Kammer et al. (2015) also found that younger participants showed interest in an individualized subscription model, paying only for those sections they are interested in, whereas older participants preferred subscriptions with a broad, professional selection of news (Kammer et al., 2015). Goyanes (2020) found that older people are more likely to pay for local news when they are concerned about these media’s financial state.

The relationship between price and paying for news has similar ambiguities. While price has the strongest individual (negative) effect on paying for news (O’Brien et al., 2020), research also suggests that to those already paying for news, price is less important. For digital news, Kammer et al. (2015) found that people’s general principles towards paying for news (e.g., whether quality journalism is worth paying for) were more influential than the size of the subscription fee. Chyi and Tenenboim (2019) found that for print newspapers, demand is inelastic, meaning that responsiveness to price changes is relatively low. Even though subscription prices doubled and single-copy prices tripled since 2008, two-thirds of readers remained loyal to the print product, leading to an overall increase in revenue despite the decrease in subscription and usage numbers (Chyi and Tenenboim, 2019). As suggested earlier, there is also a link between general attitudes toward paying for media and paying for news. Predictors of paying for digital news include paying for offline news (Fletcher and Nielsen, 2017; Kammer et al., 2015), paying for online media (Fletcher and Nielsen, 2020), and paying for online entertainment media (Fletcher and Nielsen, 2020). General entertainment spending is also associated with paying for news in general (i.e., not specifically online) (Chen and Thorson, 2021).

Research also shows a positive relationship between perceived quality and paying for news (Chen and Thorson, 2021). Here, materiality matters: online news is generally seen as less valuable or worth paying for than print news. Chyi and Yang (2009; see also Kim et al., 2021a) found that online news is an “inferior good”, meaning that as people’s income goes up, their consumption of online news goes down. The print newspaper, on the other hand, is a “normal good”, characterized by a positive relationship between income and demand (Chyi and Yang, 2009). Findings from qualitative research confirm that news users tend to see online news as superficial, commodified, and lacking something extra (Himma-Kadakas and Kõuts, 2015; Kammer et al., 2015: 115), and – vice versa – that “the expectation of exclusive quality” and “web distinctive content” are main reasons to pay for online news (Himma-Kadakas and Kõuts, 2015). Regarding exclusivity, Goyanes et al. (2021) found that readers assessed the economic value of exclusive online news written by a prestigious journalist as higher when it came from a new medium rather than a legacy medium.

Relatedly, a “free mentality” is negatively correlated with paying for digital news (O’Brien et al., 2020). Being able to easily access a wealth of information online lowers the perceived value of such information (Himma-Kadakas and Kõuts, 2015). Based on in-depth interviews with news users, Goyanes et al. (2022) identify four dimensions of “the culture of free”: online news as a public good, the habit of consuming news for free, free alternatives, and a lack of interest in news. Interestingly, Fletcher and Nielsen (2017) found that people who consume free online news from public service media (PSM) are not less likely to pay for news, leading them to conclude that such use “by itself does not help create a reference price of zero for all other news available online” (p. 1175).

How news media frame paying for news matters too. Cook and Attari (2012) found that support and willingness to pay for digital news increased when paywalls were framed in terms of “financial necessity”, but decreased when they were framed in terms of “a profit motive” (p. 1). Kim et al. (2021b) found that subscription appeals using loss-framed messages (e.g., “Don’t lose touch with news from [….]”) generated fewer clicks than those with gain-framed (e.g., “Stay in touch with news from […]”) messages, suggesting that “subscription decisions are motivated by feeling relatively certain about gaining beneficial information from doing so” (p. 314).

Yet, whereas uses and gratifications studies typically point to “surveillance” (and to a lesser extent “entertainment” and “passing time”) as people’s main reason for using news (e.g., Diddi and LaRose, 2006), Chen and Thorson (2021) found only one motivation significantly predicted paying for news: social-cultural interaction, measured via “I consume news to define/promote my membership in subgroups I belong” (p. 1303). This was found across categories of paying (print/digital-bundles, digital-only, national, local) and outweighed habit strength and perceived quality (Chen and Thorson, 2021). In a recent survey among people who cancelled their news subscription, NiemanLab (2021) found that “ideology or politics” were a primary reason (30%) to cancel. Other reasons were price (31%), not good enough content (13%), too little time to read (13%) and customer-service issues (12%) (NiemanLab, 2021). Merging clickstream data with subscriber payment data, Kim et al. (2021a) found that regularity (but not intensity) of reading, reading local news content, and newsletter subscription were negatively related to local newspaper cancellation. Evidencing the importance of usability, they also found use of ad blockers mitigates ad irritation, making news users more likely to return to the news site and less likely to cancel their subscription (Kim et al., 2021a).

As noted, whereas research has identified factors influencing past payment, paying intent, and willingness to pay for news, the underlying experiences involved have remained under-explored (O’Brien et al., 2020). This paper therefore explores people’s considerations for (not) paying for news. It focuses not on a general public but on (1) participants interested in receiving a trial subscription, (2) foregrounds their everyday experiences and practices around news subscription by providing them access to one, (3) and explores their orientation toward both print and digital subscriptions.

Method

To explore people’s reasons for (not) paying for news, this study took a qualitative approach: 68 participants tried a free three-week newspaper trial subscription and were interviewed in-depth afterward. Since the overall project focused on how new news habits start to form (see Groot Kormelink, 2022), the only selection criterium for participants was their interest in trying out a trial subscription. Participants were told they would be interviewed about their overall experiences, and the interviews included questions about their thoughts and experiences regarding paying for news. The rationale for having participants “undergo” a news subscription was that this would help participants talk about their actual experiences with having access to a newspaper subscription rather than their general attitudes toward paying for news (Groot Kormelink, 2020). Participants were able to choose between four Dutch newspapers: De Volkskrant (N = 37), Trouw (N = 7), AD (N = 12), and Het Parool (N = 12). They also chose between a full subscription (six-day print delivery plus digital access) (N = 38), weekend-only print delivery plus digital access (N = 12), and a digital-only option (N = 18). For each title, participants had access to three digital formats: the news website, the news app, and a separate app for the PDF-version of the newspaper. Both apps were free to download, but participants needed to register to go behind the paywall and/or download the PDF-paper. The subscriptions stopped automatically.

After the three-week period, participants were interviewed. In addition to questions about habit formation, the semi-structured interviews included questions about whether and why participants were (not) interested in converting their trial subscription into a paid subscription. Interviews were recorded and transcribed and participants signed an informed consent form. For this particular article, transcripts were carefully reread and all remarks related to (not) paying for news were identified and pasted into a separate file. To ensure no comments about payment were missed, an additional inspection of the transcripts was done via a list of search terms. The list consisted of the following Dutch terms: geld, duur/dure, goedko*, gratis, kost, prijs*, prijz*, financi*, aanb*, beta*. After labelling the data, similar labels were grouped into categories, and via constant comparison categories and subcategories were further refined (Thomas, 2006).

Interviews were done by the author and students from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Students received extensive interviewing training and feedback. Participants were selected via snowball sampling, starting from the social circle of the interviewees. Consequently, they were relatively highly educated. Ages ranged from 20 to 75, but the sample was heavily dominated by participants in their 20s and 50s. The sample included 36 women and 32 men. Data collection took place in the Netherlands. In 2021, 17% (up by 3) of Dutch people paid for online news in the past year, which is the average among the 20 countries tracked, but low compared to Nordic countries like Norway (45%) and Sweden (30%) (Newman et al., 2021). When Dutch people do pay for (digital) news, this takes the form of a digital-only subscription (36%), a print-digital bundle subscription (31%), free digital news as part of non-news subscription (e.g., broadband, phone, cable) (23%), access via someone else who pays for news (18%), one-time payment for digital access (18%), or donation (17%) (Lauf and Brennecke, 2021).

It should be emphasized that the aim of this qualitative study is to find reasons people have for (not) paying for news. As participants were free to use whichever medium they wanted at any time, no systematic comparisons between subscription or media types can be made, but wherever relevant, types will be mentioned.

Results

Conclusion

Following recent calls for better understanding people’s underlying needs and motives for paying for news (O’Brien et al., 2020), this paper explored the considerations news users have for paying or not paying for a news subscription. The study’s qualitative findings contribute to existing research by adding depth and nuance. Unsurprisingly, price emerged as the main reason not to pay for a news subscription (O’Brien et al., 2020). What stands out is the role subscription culture seems to play in how younger participants think about paying for news. Fletcher and Nielsen (2017) found Spotify and Netflix set a reference price above zero for digital news, and this study suggests these services may even create a rather exact price point in young people’s mind: the price of a shared Netflix or Spotify account. The centrality of these digital services to how young participants think about paying for news is further attested by their suggestion to create shareable news subscriptions and by how subscription saturation – or “subscription fatigue” (Fletcher, 2019) – was a reason not to subscribe to news. More generally, price seemed to be the main category where age played a role in how participants perceived paying for news. Whereas for younger participants budget constraints were a main concern, for older participants it was not so much paying for news itself as the high – and in their eyes unfair – price of long-term subscriptions. It should be noted, though, that participants were relatively highly educated and assumably had a higher than average income; otherwise budget constraints likely would have played a bigger role across age groups. Another finding that stands out is that when referencing price, participants had a full print subscription in mind, even when their preferred subscription type was a less costly weekend-only or digital subscription. Some were surprised by how affordable these alternative subscription types were, suggesting it could be worthwhile for news media to more strongly advertise these prices. Future research could test the optimal price points for different subscription types.

Relatedly, although this paper set out to explore how participants oriented toward paying for both print and digital subscriptions, the type of subscription barely came up in the interviews; participants tended to talk about subscriptions in general terms. Only for certain (sub)categories materiality was mentioned: for instance, the print newspaper “forced” commitment by disciplining participants into actually sitting down and reading the news. A first explanation for the lack of reference to specific subscription types is that – as suggested by print subscriptions being the reference point for price – participants had a specific subscription type in mind without specifying this. An alternative explanation is the study’s methodological design: most participants (50/68) opted for a mixed type subscription (i.e., both print and digital access) and therefore may have conflated the two types. However, the lack of differentiation between print and digital subscriptions doesn’t necessarily mean materiality doesn’t matter for willingness to pay (see e.g., Himma-Kadakas and Kõuts, 2015; Kammer et al., 2015). Future studies could more systematically distinguish between print and digital subscriptions to allow for comparative analyses.

In line with previous research (Goyanes et al., 2022; Himma-Kadakas and Kõuts, 2015; O’Brien et al., 2020), the availability of free news was another dominant reason not to pay for news. Even if participants realized paid-for news was more in-depth, many considered the news they can freely access online sufficient. Indeed, some even found the news from their trial subscription too in-depth for their particular needs. Others valued the comparatively high quality of the news, but were satisfied with the limited number of free articles metered paywalls allow them to read. Olsen et al. (2020: 16) suggest this possibility to “cherry-pick” may prevent users from getting a subscription. At the same time, a news subscription was also described as a convenient professional service: a one-stop shop for certified news that spares you from having to gather your news diet from sometimes dubious online sources. Whereas quality was mentioned as a potential reason to pay for news (Chen and Thorson, 2021), it did not, unlike in previous studies (Kammer et al., 2015; NiemanLab, 2021), come up negatively as a reason not to pay for news. This is likely explained by the design of this study: the newspapers participants could choose from are generally considered quality news.

Another main reason not to pay for news was not wanting to commit to a newspaper. Participants were not just wary of being stuck with difficult-to-cancel subscriptions, but also did not want to commit and thus limit themselves to one medium. In addition, they imagined paying for a subscription as a “commitment device” (Rogers et al., 2014). This was seen both positively and negatively: spending money would force them to read the news, but it would also help guarantee they actually do it. This suggests participants have a somewhat ambiguous relation with news: they want to or feel like they should consume it, yet have a hard time getting themselves to do so.

Whereas ideology and politics were previously found to be a dominant reason to cancel one’s news subscription (NiemanLab, 2021), such considerations were not mentioned by the participants of this study – except by one participant who hadn’t realized Trouw devotes sizable attention to religion and philosophy. “Social-cultural interaction” (i.e., paying for news to define or promote one’s membership of a subgroup) (Chen and Thorson, 2021) also didn’t come up, although admittedly the interview questions didn’t specifically probe this topic. Future research should further explore the role social identity plays in consuming and paying for news (see e.g., Banjac, 2022; Lindell, 2018). One possible explanation for ideology or politics not coming up is that the Dutch media landscape is less polarized than e.g., the US or the UK (Fletcher et al., 2020). Participants likely also selected the newspaper that most aligned with their interests and/or values.

While Dutch news users are average in their payment for digital news (Newman et al., 2021), the country’s combination of highly trusted public service media and commercial news media could limit the cross-country comparability of some findings. For instance, public service media may not be considered attractive free alternatives in countries where these media don’t enjoy high trust levels. Subscription culture being a dominant reference point among young people, on the other hand, is likely to be a more global phenomenon (Fletcher and Nielsen, 2020). Cross-country comparisons could reveal further differences in experiences regarding paying for news. Following French government experiment “Mon journal offert [My free newspaper]”, which sponsored a year-long free news subscription for young people and led 5–8% of participants to take out a paid subscription (Foster and Bunting, 2019), it would also be interesting to explore whether long-term trial subscriptions would lead to stronger conversion numbers.

A final limitation is that this study’s sample was dominated by (especially) 20- and 50-year-olds. It is not unthinkable that people in other life stages would have additional considerations for (not) paying for news. One speculation on why younger participants in particular provided reasons to (maybe) pay for news in the future is that they felt a stronger reason to justify never having paid for a subscription. Future research could further explore the role (paying for) news plays in young people’s identity construction, including how news media could appeal to those considerations (e.g., becoming an “adult”, a “good citizen”).