A new paper in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking by researchers from Indiana University and Columbia suggests that asking people to pay for content when it used to be free — the focus is on the The New York Times paywall — doesn’t work all that well. That is, unless the party asking readers to pay emphasizes how much it really, really needs the money.

According to the study, “Paying for What Was Free: Lessons from the New York Times Paywall,” by Columbia’s Jonathan E. Cook and Indiana University’s Shahzeen Z. Attari:

Framing the paywall in terms of a profit motive proved to be a noncompelling justification, sharply decreasing both support and willingness to pay. Results suggest that people react negatively to paying for previously free content, but change can be facilitated with compelling justifications that emphasize fairness…. Participants generally did not plan to purchase a digital subscription and were remarkably consistent in their subsequent behavior. They decreased their visits, devalued the NYT, and frequently planned to exploit loopholes to bypass the paywall or switch providers altogether.

Of course, The New York Times has found 900,000 readers to pay for online access. But the new paper suggests that number could be even higher.

What is required to make readers pay?

When participants were provided with a compelling justification for the paywall—that the NYT was likely to go bankrupt without it—their support and willingness to pay increased. In contrast, when participants were provided with a justification that emphasized financial stability, their support and willingness to pay decreased. It is possible that this latter condition simply confirmed participants’ sense that the paywall was unfair, rather than providing a compelling profit justification.