New Study Shows that “Go Paperless – Go Green” Claims Fall Flat
According to a recent “nudge” campaign by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), marketing messages touting the environmental benefits of going paperless are falling on deaf ears. The results of the CRA campaign show that such green claims have little impact on the consumer’s choice for switching from paper to online options. In the CRA campaign, tax payers were encouraged to file online and eliminate paper filing. A nudge campaign involves using soft messages to “nudge” the audience to make desired choices. In this case, the campaign used different messages ranging from no specific environmental messaging to strong environmental messaging – including a promise to plant a tree when switching to online filing. The results show that environmental messaging was no more effective than generic messaging, with the nudge campaign having a negligible impact of about 1% increase in online filing. Click Read More below for additional information.