FYI On Apr 5, 2017, at 8:18 PM, Carlton Samuels <carlton.samuels@gmail.com> wrote: Thank you for sharing, Brain. Apropos some discussions in the At-Large pertaining types of TLDs that might be supportable for [future] entry in the namespace, this paper certainly provides another point of departure for consideration; essentiality. With your permission, might I share with the ALAC? -Carlton ============================== *Carlton A Samuels* *Mobile: 876-818-1799 <(876)%20818-1799> Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 5:53 PM, Brian Aitchison <brian.aitchison@icann.org> wrote:

Dear CCTRT,

Hitting you with another piece of research, although this time more relevant to the “Choice” aspect of the review. I met the author of the attached paper in Copenhagen. He’s a PhD researcher working out of Japan’s Daito Bunka University. His paper is entitled “Policy-Oriented Evaluation of the Expansion of the Top-Level Domain Name Space.”

Abstract: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i d=2909852[papers.ssrn.com] <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__papers.ssrn.com_sol3_pa...>

He did an analysis of the “essentiality” of new gTLDs to consumers by measuring the price elasticity between generic, geographic, and internationalized gTLDs. He uses a regression model that employs registration fees and TLD type (geographic, generic, internationalized) as explanatory variables to predict the number of registrations in a given TLD (the response variable).

*The most interesting finding to me pertains to geographic TLDs:* *as registration fees go up, so too do registration numbers*. This is in contrast to the generic TLDs, which show the relationship we would expect: as registration fees go up, registration numbers go down.

The author concludes that this points to geographic TLDs being more “essential” to consumers, and therefore they may be willing to pay a higher price. He also finds that for geographic TLDs representing high income locales, the fee levels have no effect on registration numbers. However, in low income locales, registration numbers go down as fees go up.

Some copy-pasted tidbits:

Based on the analysis of domain name use and pricing across 418 ngTLD's, it is found that ngTLD's have significantly different levels of essentiality for domain name registrants depending on the TLD type. In particular, geographic and internationalised ngTLD's have a higher degree of essentiality than generic ngTLD's.

Although these additions [of new gTLDs] were welcome from the perspective of increased user choice and competition in the domain name market, the argument of this kind has not been tested yet against user acceptance or behaviour. According to the result of the analysis in this study, the author concludes that newly added gTLD's do reflect the diversity of domain name demands in the Internet community with varying degrees of essentiality.

I hope you find this useful.

Best,

Brian

Brian Aitchison, MRes, PhD

Lead Researcher

Operations & Policy Research

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

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