방송의 디지털화에 따른 소비자 편익 분석

The digital broadcasting is becoming an axis for information infrastructure that enables us to communicate with anyone and transfer knowledge & information at any place and in any time. In particular, it plays a role of a network as well as a traditional entertainment, and thus can improve the audience’s options and rights, demolish the boundary between broadcasting business and communications business, and promote the development and competition in information industry including broadcasting and communications industry. This paper attempts to measure the consumer benefits of the digital broadcasting service with the attributes such as the number of channels, definition, T-commerce, T-banking, VOD, and online game. To this end, we apply a contingent choice method, a kind of conjoint analysis, to a survey data. We consider the trade-offs between price and the six attributes for selecting a preferred alternative of digital broadcasting service and derive the marginal willingness to pay (WTP) estimate for each attribute. A survey of 500 persons who are 15 to 60 years old and live in the Metropolitan area was implemented during October 2006. The respondents have a significant WTP for T-commerce, VOD, and online game, but were not willing to pay a significant amount for T-banking. It was found from the welfare analysis of high definition versus many channels that the respondents place a higher value on high definition than many channels. The results are expected to provide policy-makers with useful information for activating the digitalization of the broadcasting.