Factors Influencing Over-the-top Services Adoption: Multinomial Logistic Regression between Non-adopters, Free Service, and Paid Service Adopters

Global content providers have faced a fundamental problem of who and why they do not adopt OTT services. We investigate the adoption behavior of OTT consumers by segmenting them into non-adopters, free OTT service adopters, and paid OTT service adopters. Using the Korea Media Panel Survey in 2019 (N = 8,011), we conduct multinomial logistic regression analysis to predict free service adopters (n = 3,164) and paid OTT service adopters (n = 335) based on non-adopters (n = 4,512). This study demonstrated that demographic variables predict OTT service adopters. Among the dimensions of consumer innovativeness, hedonic dimension was a strong predictor of free and paid OTT service adopters. The lower the social dimension, the higher the probability of adopting paid OTT services. This suggests that OTT is an entertainment-oriented service that shows a willingness to pay to gain pleasure in individual free time rather than meaningful rewards. Also, this study provides important insights to be considered in literature on innovative service adoption and global OTT marketers by identifying the low privacy awareness and new media effect toward OTT adoption.