An Empirical Research On The Affecting Factors Of Consumers’ Willingness To Pay For Digital Music

With the development and popularity of the Internet, the industry of digital music is developing fast, but the development is being blocked by the ineffeiciency of the intellectual property right protection work. Different groups have different stands as to the charge for digial music service, which has attracted attention from a number of researchers. There is a long way to go and serious responsibilities to take if the healthy developments of digital music industry in mainland China is to be realized. Chinese government takes many measures to promote its development. The developemnt of digial music industry is included in the 13 th Five-Year Plan; National Copyright Bureau intends to revise the Copyrihgt Law for the third time and has released an announcement to order the websites to take offline those unauthorised digital music works. Thus, the copyright management is regulated and unauthorised and free digital music resources are being limited. These actions collide with costomers free mentality and the long-forming habit of getting digital music for free since the consumption habit of the mass customers shall not adopt so soon. Under this condition, it is of great practical importance to investigate consumers‘ willingness to pay(WTP) for digital music and its affecting factors to give feedback to national policy making, to offer basis for the charging system set-up, and to protect consumers‘ benefits practically.Related researches fall into four categories: 1)studies on the behavior of using unaothorised digital music resources, the intentions and the attitudes to the behavior and its affecting factors; 2)the economic effects of free digital music resources; 3)consumers‘ WTP for digital music and its affecting factors; 4) the industry paradigma and charging modes. Frequently applied theories are the theory of reasoned behavior, the theory of planned behavior, ethic decision-making process theory and the cognitive dissonance thoery. But the existent researches have some shortcomings. In regard to the theories applied, factors about the cultural background of the customers and the contextual factors of the behavior itself are not included in these theories. In regard to the research subject, customers in the mainland China are scarecely researched and analyzed. This research theoreotically aims to increase the accountabiliy and predictability of the theory of planned behavior and the theory of reasoned behavior in different cultural backgorunds by adding other variables considering the cultural background, the specific behavior and consumers‘ characteristics. This research aims to study Chinese customers‘ willingness to pay(WTP) for digital music and its affecting factors to offer practical suggestions to construct proper charging systems and market segmentation.The theory of planned behavior holds that behaviors are directly stimulated by intentions which is the result of attitudes, subjective norm and perceived behavior control. But TPB does not include the effects of the cultural backgorund on customers and contextual factors. The deterrenc theory holds that the enactment and the inforcement of laws have an irreplaceable role in constructing social norms and leading the forming of habits and practice. As mentioned above, the revision of related laws and using of administrative means are constructing new surroundings for consumption.Based on TPB, Decomposed TPB, Extended TPB and the deterrence theory, this research proposes a research model of factors influencing customers‘ WTP for digital music, including some core definitions, namely group norm, attitude, quality sensitivity, music affinity, deterrence effects of the law and difficulty of access based on the literature review. The hypotheses are as follows: 1)consumers‘ attitude, the group norm, sensitivity to quality, music affinity have effects on consumers‘ WTP; 2) the difficulty of access and the deterrence effect of the law moderate the relationship between attitude, group norm, quality sensitivity music affinity and consumers‘ WTP; 3) the endowment chracteristics of customers have effects on their WTP; 4)the habit strength of enjoying music free, the perceived sensibility of charging and perceived benefits of paying for digital music will affect consumers‘ attitude; 5) attitude mediates the relationship between habit strength, perceived sensibility of charging, perceived beneftifs of paying for digital music and WTP.This paper defines the exact meaning of these constructs and operationalizes these variables and develops related scales. Then we tested the reliability and validity of questionnaire and the data collected from 624 subjects mostly of which are university students in Wuhan city. We did empirical analysis of the data with SPSS 17.0. The main results are as follows: 1) attitude, group norm and sensitivity to music quality influence WTP significantly while music affinity affect WTP not so significantly; 2) deterrence effect of the law has no effects on WTP and no moderating effects while perceived difficulty of access affect WTP directly significantly and has moderating effects between attitude and WTP; 3)education level negatively affect customers‘ WTP significantly and the level of family monthly income has effects on WTP not so significantly while gender and age have no effects on WTP; 4)customers‘ habit strength for free music, perceived justification for digital music charging and perceived benefits of paying for music influence customers‘ attitudes toward music charging significantly; 5) attitude has mediating effects between habit strength, perceived benefits of paid digital music service and WTP but no mediating effects between perceived sensibility and WTP.Based on the analysis results, we can safely draw conclusions as following: 1) attitude can predict people‘s WTP significantly and attitude is influenced not only by past consumption behaviors but also the attitude refelected by and conveyed by the social media; 2) for Chinese customers grown up in the collectism, they take example from peole around them and the deterrence effect of the legislation is not significant to influence their ideology and behaviors; 4) the Annoncement is effective since customers express the common difficulty of access.To stimulate customers‘ WTP for digital music, it needs support and cooperation from all works of life. 1)the legislation branch of the government should adapt related law considering the new situation and the development of internet culture; 2)the social media should make customers know about the benefits and the justification of paying for digital music to ease customers‘ negative opinions toward music charging. 3)The record labels and the music platforms should regulate the copyright agreement properly and the music platforms should keep the coexistence of music for free and for commercial ends and construct proper charging modes and standards based on the segmentation of the market and fully understanding of customers‘ WTP.