On the disadvantages of media as a service with regard to psychological ownership

Abstract

Media as a Service (MaaS), which enables customers to access entire media libraries over a subscription period, has become an important revenue driver for the entertainment industry. By using an experiment related to music consumption, our study suggests that MaaS services, and in particular the ones that are free of charge, cause customers to feel a lower degree of psychological ownership (PO) for the provided content than for content provided via physical media and media files. Since PO is known to be an important driver of customers' behaviors and feelings such as their willingness to pay, these findings suggest that PO might hinder MaaS' continuing success.