Factors determining subscription prices of scholarly journals in business discipline: Themes and variations

Abstract

This empirical study investigates factors that affect subscription prices of business journals. The hypotheses are that a number of factors affect journal subscription prices including types of publishers, features of publications, and locations of publications. While some regression results are consistent with the main theoretical themes of previous studies, others show variations. First, it was found that journals with advertisement tend to have lower subscription prices than those without advertisement. None of previous studies found this variable statistically significant. Second, annual subscription prices of business journals published in the U.K. are substantially higher than those published in the U.S. while the coefficients of journals published in Europe were not statistically significant. Third, no evidence was found that journals with larger circulations have lower subscription prices. This study concludes that to examine factors affecting subscription prices, one needs to focus on journals by discipline since determinants of journal prices vary from discipline to discipline.