Watching porn will never be the same again. You don’t have to feel bad or guilty watching porn, as Pornhub gives people a good incentive to watch. By watching a video they contribute to a better, greener, society! How? For every 100 videos streamed in a certain category (for this campaign they choose the ‘Big Dick’ category), Pornhub will plant a tree! Watching porn now is justified as a form of volunteering!

The Pornhub gives America Wood campaign has received much media attention due to the strange connection (which linguistically perfectly makes sense) between porn and a sustainable, green initiative. Next to media attention, many memes have been created on popular sites (eg. 9gag.com),  given the campaign a boost. These memes can be perceived as value co-creation, as they are not made by Pornhub, but by people who are intrigued/inspired by the campaign. The many memes, comments and blogs about Pornhub’s campaign (see one of them below) attracts more attention, and thus creates value (both for the environment as for pornhub).

The campaign has been a very successful one for the porn site; 15.473 trees have been planted (http://www.pornhub.com/event/arborday). The campaign lasted merely week, and easy calculations show that over 15 million videos (in the ‘Big Dick’ category only!) have been viewed on the platform during that week.

This form of charity can be seen as a form of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding in its most basic economic perspective is described as ‘raising capital from many people through an online platform’ (Agrawal et al., 2013). In this specific case, the capital refers to the trees which Pornhub plants, which creates a better, greener and sustainable environment.

Contributing to a greener society, volunteering has never been this much fun! 😉

References:

• Agrawal, Ajay K., Christian Catalini, and Avi Goldfarb. “Some simple economics of crowdfunding”. No. w19133. National Bureau of Economic Research (2013).
• Pornhub Gives America Wood, retrieved from: www.pornhub.com/event/arborday