Digital Content Consumption : A Finnish-Austrian Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract

Online content consumption behavior has significantly changed. In particular, the growing success of legal media service providers such as Youtube, Netflix, or Spotify, has led to new modes of consumption. Research, however, still focuses predominately on illegal streaming and downloading behavior and its impact on media companies' commercial success. In order to paint a more comprehensive picture, we report on a cross-country study conducted in Austria and Finland, which explored digital content consumption habits and sources, young adults' attitudes towards illegal sources, and the importance of price, legality, ease of use as well as ease of access, and its influence on people's consumption behavior. Results show that young adults predominately use legal Internet sources, with music streaming provider Spotify becoming increasingly more popular. Also, respondents prefer free-of-charge (or advertisement-based) providers for which they still fall back to using illegal sources in cases where free alternatives are missing.