Banning unsolicited store flyers: Does helping the environment hurt retailing?

Retailers often use store flyers to communicate the availability, price, and promotions of their products. Many households inspect store flyers for promotions, and the majority still prefer to receive store flyers in print. Yet, many are said to throw out store flyers unread, creating excessive waste that is environmentally damaging due to the excess use of paper, ink, and logistics. Legislation to reduce the distribution and waste associated with unsolicited store flyers has been proposed, but if and how much such a cut in distribution would affect households' grocery shopping behavior remains unclear. This paper investigates a recent policy change by seven Dutch municipalities that implemented a ban on unsolicited store flyers by moving from an opt-out to an opt-in policy at some point between 2018 and 2020. Using household scanner data, the authors assess changes in shopping behavior along nine comprehensive dimensions relevant to retailers, brand manufacturers, and policymakers, using a stacked, synthetic difference-indifferences approach. Although store flyer distribution decreased by 50% under the new policy, the drastic change did not substantially affect grocery shopping behavior. These findings are robust to different time windows and modeling approaches.