New survey shows same results, many unwilling to pay online

Posted by Nestor Bailly on December 15, 2009 at 4:11 PM

Over the autumn months, International GfK held a survey of 16,800 people aged over 15 in 17 European countries and the USA called "Internet Use" and commissioned, interestingly enough, by The Wall Street Journal Europe.

Respondents were asked how willing they would be to pay to access content and what they perceive to be the Internet's influence on society. Obviously of interest to us is that merely 13% of internet users with private access reported that they would pay for 'online information.'

8% said they would accept a charge for advertising-free content, and 5% would even pay to access content with advertisements. Those better be some real flashy ads. See the graphic below for the results broken down by question and country.

What is very important to note with this study is that it makes no mention of news in particular; those polled were asked whether they would pay for "news, entertainment and information sites such as Wikipedia," lumping all online content together.

This is a serious distortion of the paid content issue, and can be potentially explained by the fact that the study was commissioned by a News Corp property: Looking for positive (or rather, not abysmal) public opinion on paywalls, they skew the question to be hyper inclusive so more people would respond affirmatively.

"80% of respondents in the 17 countries where the survey was conducted want continued free access to online content: a third of all survey participants are of the opinion that Internet content should be free of advertising and free of charge. The majority (46%) want free access to content, but are prepared to put up with advertising," the report reads.

The proportion of those prepared to accept a charge stands at 13% across all countries, as does the 8% would be willing to pay for advertising-free content, and the 5% willing pay for content with advertisements.

"However, some countries view the concept of paying for digital content more positively: 23% of Swedes, almost 20% of Dutch and British people and 17% of Americans would not mind paying to access information on the web," the study notes.

An interesting aside is the results from what people thought the internet's effect on society is. According to the research, only "a few fear that it may have a negative influence on society: around half of respondents believe that it has positive social effects, a third assess the influence of the Internet as neutral."

Whatever methodological issues there may or may not be with the phrasing of the questions in this study, it still shows, as have all the others, that people are not particularly keen on paying for news online. Now we know that they are not even willing to pay for any kind of content, whether it be entertainment or reference information.