News

Professor Geneviève Bassellier for a research stay at the BAS-Chair

Research talk on June 18th, 2015 at 5 pm in the Regional Center Frankfurt

Professor Geneviève Bassellier, PhD, Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, lingered this week for a research stay at the BAS-Chair. Together with Professor Bassellier we are working on joint research projects on IT adoption.

As part of its research visit Professor Bassellier will give a lecture on the topic "Another dime in the jukebox? A Study of motivators of prosocial behavior to support online music". The event will take place on Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 5 pm in the regional center Frankfurt in the room "Kaiserdom". The lecture is open to the public. Please register your attendance via email.

Summary: Understanding users' motivations to pay for digital goods is becoming increasingly important in a context where individuals are able to consume such goods for free. This study looks at the impact of building an online community to stimulate consumers’ pro-social behavior and support providers of digital goods. Drawing from prior research showing that members of an online community are motivated by both altruism and self-interest when making a decision to contribute to a site, we use a survey-based experiment to identify specific factors that impact a user’s payment decision in a pay-what-you-want pricing scheme for online music. Results of our conjoint analysis demonstrate that both altruism— the consumers’ decision to allocate a share of their payment to artists and to charity— and self-interest—consumers’ reputation and status gained within the community— play a role in a consumer’s decision to pay for digital goods. The most important factor in the payment decision is the inclusion of a charitable partner in the distribution of revenues while consumers were also willing to pay more for artists that are not well-established, supporting the role of both altruistic motivation factors. Results also reveal that one self-oriented motivation fact or—status building— increases willingness to pay but displaying a user’s payment does not. Altogether, this study provides important implications for online music providers, as well as for artists operating in the current music environment by highlighting the importance of building an online community around the acquisition of digital goods. It provides an important step towards understanding what drives consumers to pay for digital goods that can also be accessed for free.