The Powerful Impact Of College Leafleting
Advocates have gravitated towards the popular trend of leafleting (particularly on college campuses) as a tool for promoting veganism, yet the effectiveness of this approach has remained untested until now. New data from Farm Sanctuary and The Humane League has begun to fill this gap in advocates’ knowledge. For their study, the team distributed thousands of leaflets to students at two large state schools and returned two months later to administer an in-person survey to assess changes in the consumption of animal products. The main finding was that there was a 2% conversion rate to vegetarian or pescatarian diets for those who received a leaflet, while a considerable reduction in the intake of animal-based foods was experienced by 6% to 12% of those surveyed (differing based on the specific food in question). The study’s write-up also highlights more detailed findings and translates the data into the number of farmed animals left off dinner plates in the U.S. as a result of leafleting.
[Introduction excerpted from original source.]
“Leafleting — passing out information about factory farming and vegan eating — is one of the most common ways that animal advocates promote vegan eating in the United States.
The group Vegan Outreach, which pioneered and popularized vegan leafleting, passed out almost 3 million leaflets last year, and other groups chipped in millions more. Compassionate Communities volunteers have been distributing our Something Better leaflet, which shares the Farm Sanctuary experience, the realities of factory farming, and info on meat-free eating, to hundreds of thousands of people.
But just how effective is leafleting? How many readers actually change their diet, and how many animals are spared a lifetime of misery? Should volunteers prioritize leafleting over other forms of animal advocacy? For the first time ever, we have answers to those questions! In the fall of 2012, Compassionate Communities teamed up with The Humane League to measure the true impact of leafleting on a college campus.”
Note: The study is also profiled on the Humane League Labs’ site.