Beyond content in the subscription economy: How platform affordances build psychological assets for subscription continuity

초록

As digital subscription platforms have expanded, research has largely emphasized adoption, while the mechanisms that sustain renewal decisions remain underspecified. We address this gap by theorizing how platform affordances shape continuous subscription intention through two internal routes and by testing the account in an e-book platform setting that represents the broader subscription environment. Anchored in an affordance perspective and organized by the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework, we posit that personalization affordances cultivate psychological ownership and that socialization affordances cultivate psychological membership, which in turn support renewal. We surveyed 345 incumbent e-book subscribers in Korea and tested a structural model with moderation. Personalization affordances, operationalized as customizability and record-ability, predicted psychological ownership; socialization affordances, operationalized as recommendation, presentability, and interactivity, predicted psychological membership; both states were associated with higher continuous subscription intention. Price sensitivity attenuated the links from organism to response, with effects strongest among users low in price sensitivity. Conceptually, the findings reframe renewal as the weighted preservation of user-side assets accumulated via personalization and socialization, with price sensitivity operating as a user-specific discount rate that translates those assets into willingness to pay. Practically, the results shift managerial attention from adding features to building, protecting, and making legible the private and public user-side assets that underpin continuity in subscription platforms.

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