Why Trees don't concern me

I get my SBI Card statement mailed to me in a cover which asks me to choose an e-statement over a paper statement as that would help save trees. Though I am not the environmental loony, I am tempted. But then I stop. My past experiences with Credit Card statements tell me that in the future, you never know when I will be made to produce a physical statement to prove a point. Note that I will tend to delete my e-statements quicker than throwing away my paper statements. With the paper one, I can expect me to hold it at least for a few months. Who knows when the Credit Card Company is gonna pull something on me that would require me to have the statement to prove MY point. You see, I need to be prepared.

Good bye trees, for the moment.

This brings us to an interesting issue. Will people's concerns for society provoke them into say doing things like ask for e-statements?

Take Household recycling as an issue. In a Research paper titled, 'Consumer Motivation to Recycle When Recycling is Mandatory: Two Exploratory Studies', the authors state thus,

'Household recycling is conceptualized as a social dilemma in which households have a choice between cooperative and defective options. Promoting cooperative choice in the recycling dilemma has emerged as an important issue for social marketing.

On the basis of two explorative studies into the underlying values and consumer experiences with mandatory programs, we argue that the primary intrinsic motivational basis for cooperation includes not only environmental but also ‘civic duty’ related values. We describe how these values drive both individual experiences of recycling behavior and the reactions to non-cooperative behavior by others.'

Read the complete paper here.