A desire to help fund journalists and protect the free press, access quality journalism, and to stop annoying paywalls are the top three motivations for subscribing to news.

The other core drivers are: attachment to the local community, affordability of the subscription, and useful content.

Not all motivations apply to all. For example, supporting journalism and journalism quality are key drivers for national news brands. Community attachment — for local news. 

Demographics explain how much people can pay, but motivations explain whether they will pay and what kind of news they might subscribe to.

These are key findings of a new research study by U.S.-based professors Weiyue Chen of Butler University and Esther Thorson of Michigan State University.

Practical implications? “We can design subscription ads based on the six motivations,” recommend the authors in Journalism & Communication Monographs.

Apart from tailoring messages, news publishers can segment users by motivations rather than usage or demographics, and optimise targeting with paywalls.

The six core drivers

Here is a ranking of the subscribing motivations in the order of their relative predictive strength.

1. Supporting journalism: The desire to help sustain news organisations and keep journalists employed is found to be the single most predictive motivation — and also the reason to have more than one subscription. 
2. Journalism quality: Subscribers value accurate, fair, and in-depth reporting, especially on national and global issues.
3. Paywall trigger: Many subscribe spontaneously when they hit a paywall they can’t bypass, especially if the article is compelling or they read a lot and hit the paywall many times.
4. Community attachment: This motivation is stronger in local contexts for people who value staying informed and involved in their community or local politics.
5. Affordability: Discounts, bundles, and perceived value for money influence purchase. Price sensitivity correlates with fewer or cheaper subscriptions.
6. Content utility: If journalism feels useful — personally relevant, interesting, or helps with work – people are more likely to subscribe.

What’s new

Instead of relying on assumptions or studies from other sectors, such as retail, Professor Chen and Professor Butler developed and validated news subscription-specific motivations and then tied them to transactions. 

They combined in-depth exploratory interviews with two large-scale surveys of U.S. consumers and statistical analysis to find which factors were not only frequently mentioned but were most predictive.

The emotional or mission-driven motivations trumped demographics, although higher education correlated with subscribing to national news and higher income or age with paying more.

What about the reputation of news brands or individual journalists? User needs such as “Update me” or “Entertain me”? The convenience of app or Web site experience? News reading habits?

These commonly discussed motivations might explain why people use news but not necessarily why they pay. They were considered but did not stand out statistically or were found overlapping with the core six.

How to use this

The new framework isn’t just academic. It can inform your brand positioning, audience research, and acquisition, retention, and pricing experiments.

• Align your brand messaging. Are you emphasising credibility? Local connection? Civic responsibility? These map to specific motivations for paying.

• Rethink segmentation. Instead of crude demographics or behavioural data, consider building personas based on motivational profiles.

• Personalise your paywall pitches. Someone driven by utility needs a different call-to-action than someone driven by mission.

Interested in learning more? Read the monogragh in full. 

Greg’s Readers First newsletter is a public face of a revenue and media subscriptions initiative by INMA, outlined here. INMA members can subscribe here.

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