The effects of news authorship, exclusiveness and media type in readers paying intent for online news: An experimental study Articles uri icon

publication date

  • December 2018

start page

  • 1720

end page

  • 1738

issue

  • 7

volume

  • 22

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1464-8849

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1741-3001

abstract

  • This study explores how news authorship, exclusiveness, and media type affect readers' paying intent for digital contents. A web-based experiment involving 602 Spanish adults reveals that authorship (prestigious journalist), exclusiveness, and media type (legacy media and new media over unknown media) increase readers economic value assessments of online news. In addition, our results show that the interaction between authorship and media type is affected by the level of news exclusiveness: when an online article is written by a prestigious journalist and is exclusive, readers heuristic assessments of its economic value are biased toward new media over legacy ones, and thus privilege the former and penalize the latter in their pecuniary evaluations. These results might point to a change in readers' consumption patterns, favoring the brand values, and news production processes of new media over legacy ones.

subjects

  • Information Science

keywords

  • authorship; business models; exclusiveness; legacy media; new media; online news; paying intent