 Incentivising ‘pirates’ to pay – An experiment with comic book readersSatia Rożynek and Wojciech Hardy Information Economics and Policy, 2023, vol. 64, issue C Abstract: Internet piracy has been repeatedly shown to displace the authorised consumption of digital content. However, fewer studies tried to identify a viable solution and even less tried to convert the ‘pirates’ into paying consumers. We conducted a three-wave panel survey among comic book readers, asking about their consumption from various sources. After each wave, a random subsample was provided with prizes in the form of digital comic books from a legal provider. We analyse the effects of prizes on further consumption behaviour. The first prizing scheme incentivised setting up an account, installing a reader app and familiarising oneself with the catalogue of the dominant digital seller of comics. The second scheme aimed at hooking consumers on particular comic book series. However, we only find small evidence of a change in the consumption patterns or the willingness to pay for digital formats. We suggest that for the case of comic books, the prices of lower-valued digital copies might deter purchase. Furthermore, we discuss the use of similar research design for other creative content. Keywords: Internet piracy; Comic books; Switching costs; Prizes; Giveaways; Habit formation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:64:y:2023:i:c:s0167624523000306 DOI: 10.1016/j.infoecopol.2023.101045 Access Statistics for this article Information Economics and Policy is currently edited by D. Waterman More articles in Information Economics and Policy from Elsevier |
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