paying not to watch movies

Yes, there’s such a thing as too much entertainment.

The article below is an intriguing read on motivation and movie-watching, especially as it provides Netflix-derived data on a phenomenon we’re all familiar with: you know you should watch a movie X (Amistad, Hotel Rwanda, etc.), but you’re simply never in the mood:

Wall Street Journal: For some Netflix users, red envelopes gather dust

Having grown up in a religious family that seldom went to movies, David Morrison didn’t see a film in the theater until his early 20s. So when the Greensboro, N.C., resident heard about the DVD-by-mail rental service Netflix, he figured he could use it to watch great films he may have missed.

When he first joined, he packed his Netflix queue — a member’s running list of rental requests — with diverse films. He watched Robert Flaherty’s 1922 documentary “Nanook of the North,” which follows an Inuit man’s struggle to survive in the Arctic; Roman Polanski’s 1974 detective film, “Chinatown”; and Sofia Coppola’s 2000 teenage suicide drama “The Virgin Suicides.”

But soon, his excitement over the arrival of the bright red Netflix envelopes began to ebb. And the DVDs began to collect, unwatched, on his coffee table. “They were just coming to my house, sitting around and I was sending them back,” said Mr. Morrison, 37, who cancelled his subscription after a few months.

Netflix Inc., which boasts nearly five million members, often trumpets how its all-you-can-eat rental model is changing the way people are watching movies. But Netflix may also be changing the way people don’t watch them. Through its Web site, Netflix makes it easy to comb through a massive catalog of 60,000 films. It offers access to everything from Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 silent tramp movie “The Kid” to recent Academy Award-winners like “Crash.” And some members admit that when browsing the Netflix backlog, they overestimate their appetite for off-the-beaten-track films. The result: Sometimes DVDs languish for months without being watched.

“It’s a paradox of abundance,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University. If people aren’t pressured to see a movie in a specific time frame, he said, viewers tend to put it lower on their priority list. “When you have every choice in front of you, you have less urgency about any particular choice,” he added.

The result can be a type of guilt-fueled Netflix bottleneck for users, who may not feel like watching a film but are also loath to return it, said Mike Kaltschnee, who writes a popular blog called HackingNetflix. He’s experienced the sensation himself. He twice rented Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” kept it for weeks, only to send it back unwatched. He cites his Catholic upbringing for his inability to watch the sometimes-brutal depiction of Christ’s last days. “It’s childish almost. It’s just a movie. But I could not put it in the DVD player,” he said. “And I know I’m not alone.”

High-brow, dense or dark movies, like “The Passion of the Christ,” prove particularly tough for some Netflix members to watch.

Member Lisa Snider added “Hotel Rwanda,” — a film set against the central African nation’s ethnic massacres of the 1990s — to her Netflix queue after it was nominated for three Academy Awards. But it sat for two months in her home before she mailed it back unwatched. “I could have bought that movie three times, I’m sure, for my rental fee,” said the 37-year-old Ojai, Calif., resident.

Yet, Ms. Snider said she had no trouble zipping through her next Netflix pick: “Junebug,” a comedy about an art dealer’s experience with a quirky Southern family. “It’s just sort of a kooky movie,” she said.

Netflix officials declined to disclose data on how often movies are shipped or what types of movies tend to be returned quickly, citing competitive concerns. But a company spokesman said the fact that some people let movies linger for months before watching them, doesn’t hurt its business.

Researchers have documented this behavior among movie-watchers. In a 1999 experiment, a group of volunteers were asked to choose movies to rent from a list of 24 videos. Their options were a mix of what researchers termed “low-brow” movies — including “My Cousin Vinny” and “Groundhog Day” — and “high-brow” offerings, such as “Schindler’s List” or the subtitled “Like Water for Chocolate.” The researchers found that when people chose movies to watch the same day, they often picked comedies or action films. But when they were asked to pick movies to watch at a later date, they were more likely to make “high-brow” selections.

For example, the subjects were much more likely to select Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust survival drama “Schindler’s List” to watch in the future, rather than on the same night. “It’s a movie that’s really miserable to watch but you feel like you should watch it,” said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the study’s authors.

Others eye Netflix’s nature as a subscription service as a way to explain why people rent, but sometimes don’t watch. Users pay a flat monthly fee for the service. There are no late fees to compel users to return the movies quickly, though Netflix restricts how many DVDs members can have out at a time.

Such subscription services tap into a powerful vein of human instinct, said Peter Fader, a marketing professor who studies consumer behavior at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “People want unfettered access to things. They want whatever they want, to have as much as they want, when they want it,” said Mr. Fader. “And they’re willing to pay irrationally for it.”

Even consumer behavior experts can’t completely shake this habit. At one point, Mr. Fader had two Netflix DVDs — both part of Ken Burns’ “Baseball” documentary series — sitting at his home for more than six months. He describes the series as “weighty,” but didn’t want to send them back. “It’s too much of an admission to say, ‘I give up,’” Mr. Fader said.

When Phillip Ginder and his wife first joined Netflix in November 2002, they zipped through their queues — often receiving, watching and re-sending movies in the same day. But more recently, the 30-year-old longshoreman said their DVD metabolism has dropped considerably.

For instance, the couple has let “The Aristocrats,” a documentary in which a slew of comedians tell the same raunchy joke, languish at their San Pedro, Calif., home for four months. Mr. Ginder said he has been unable to coordinate a time to watch it with his wife and roommate, who both want to see it. “Until that perfect moment arrives, it’s sitting there,” he said.

Some Netflix members argue that unwatched movies are part of the price you pay for having access to Netflix’s broad catalog. Girish Shambu, a professor of business management at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., has been a longtime, heavy-duty Netflix user. For around $50 a month, his plan lets him rent eight DVDs at one time. “Part of the price you pay is some movies you don’t get to watch,” said Mr. Shambu, 42, a part-time film critic. “Some movies do collect dust.”