Special Report

Printing costs more than digital. The paper copy still wins.

The same content as a file costs a fraction of print and postage. NRMA's Open Road has shipped as a printed quarterly since 1927, and each issue still reaches more than 1.3 million Australians. In 2025 the company stood up a digital content hub next to it. The print run kept going.

That gap is the puzzle. Cheaper alone would have ended the printed magazine decades ago if cost were the whole story. Three research lines name what paper still does that a screen does not. Brief contact raises felt ownership. Paper changes measured comprehension. A physical object raises how much people will pay for the same content.

A digital newsletter can still be the right call. What often goes missing is that the print-versus-digital choice gets settled on production cost alone. The cited work points at attention, memory, and the value people assign to what they receive.

The story in four parts

A century-old magazine, still mailed

Open Road still goes out in the post each quarter. NRMA's digital hub sits beside that run, and never took its place.

Touching an object makes it feel like yours

Peck & Shu (2009): even a short touch raised felt ownership, and raised what people would pay.

The page still beats the screen

Mangen et al. (2013): identical text, higher comprehension scores on paper than on screen.

The same file, worth less on a screen

Atasoy & Morewedge (2018): people valued and paid more when identical content arrived as a physical object.

The evidence at a glance

1.3 million readers, unchanged since 2025

NRMA still posts Open Road to more than 1.3 million Australians an issue. The 2025 digital hub launched next to that print run, and left the print schedule intact.

Touch alone raises perceived ownership

Four separate studies found that a brief touch, or even imagining a touch, raised felt ownership and raised willingness to pay.

Paper beat screen on a real test

72 tenth-graders scored significantly higher on the same text in print than on an identical PDF on screen.

The same content, priced higher on paper

Five separate experiments found people paid more for a physical copy of identical content than for the digital version.

A magazine that could be sent for almost nothing, and still isn't

Australian letterboxes already carry the clearest live version of this tension.

Real-world example

NRMA's Open Road magazine (Australia, since 1927)

Why keep printing and posting something that could be sent for almost nothing?

Open Road is NRMA's quarterly member magazine: car reviews, road trips, motoring advice. It has published without a break since 1927, and still reaches more than 1.3 million Australians an issue. Four times a year NRMA prints and mails it, a cost that grows with membership.

Early in 2025, NRMA opened a digital content hub beside Open Road: site and app content with daily updates, video, and a trip planner, at near-zero marginal cost per reader. The quarterly print schedule stayed the same.

What this shows: a membership organisation with a standing reason to cut print and postage chose to keep paying both. NRMA has not published its own rationale. The pages that follow lay out the behavioural evidence for why a physical copy can beat a digital one. They do not claim to know NRMA's internal decision.

NRMA (2025). “NRMA's iconic Open Road magazine goes online with new content hub.” Press release. See also: Mi3 and B&T.
Spotted in the wild

That claim does not rest only on NRMA's press release. A physical Spring 2026 issue arrived in a real letterbox, and the digital hub that launched beside it is a working app tab today.

Cover of NRMA's Open Road magazine, Spring 2026 issue, showing the cover story Australia in Bloom: Four Spectacular Wildflower Road Trips and a Best Value Car Awards sidebar.

NRMA, Open Road magazine, Spring 2026 issue: cover story “Australia in Bloom: Four Spectacular Wildflower Road Trips,” plus a “Best Value Car Awards” sidebar. Photographed August 2026.

NRMA app home screen showing the Get inspired article feed and My articles reading list, the digital content hub NRMA launched alongside Open Road.

NRMA app, home tab: the “Get inspired” article feed and “My articles” reading list, the digital content hub referenced above. Captured August 2026.

A dated paper copy and a live screen of the hub show both formats still running side by side, more than a year after the 2025 launch announcement. Neither photo measures whether print outperforms digital. The cited studies above, and the linked experiment below, are what test that question.

Touch creates a claim of ownership

Once ownership is already in place, this site's Endowment Effect entry covers the familiar result: people price what they own higher than they would if they were buying it cold. Joann Peck and Suzanne Shu ask an earlier question. How little contact is enough to trigger that same feeling before any real ownership exists?

Peck, J., & Shu, S. B. (2009). “The Effect of Mere Touch on Perceived Ownership.” Journal of Consumer Research, 36(3), 434–447
Four studies on how physically touching an object changes how strongly a person feels it already belongs to them.
ParaphrasedIn four studies, people who briefly touched an object, or were only asked to imagine touching it, reported higher perceived ownership than people who only looked at it.
ParaphrasedTouch also raised willingness to pay. The pattern held for people acting as sellers and for people weighing a purchase.
ParaphrasedThe authors link the finding to a 2003 Illinois attorney general warning that told holiday shoppers some retailers encourage handling merchandise on purpose, to raise the urge to buy.

The page does something the screen doesn't

A magazine someone picks up, flips, and sets down again is doing more than triggering touch. The reading surface itself is paper rather than a screen, and that surface change moves comprehension on its own.

Mangen, A., Walgermo, B. R., & Brønnick, K. (2013). “Reading Linear Texts on Paper versus Computer Screen: Effects on Reading Comprehension.” International Journal of Educational Research, 58, 61–68
72 Norwegian tenth-graders read the same two texts, split between a printed copy and an identical PDF on a computer screen.
ParaphrasedStudents who read on paper scored significantly better on the comprehension test than students who read the identical material as a PDF on screen.
ParaphrasedThe authors suggest print supplies physical, spatial cues: where a page sits, how thick the finished and remaining sections feel. A scrolling digital document does not reproduce those cues, and losing them may make it harder to build a mental map of a longer text.
Also worth citing: a 2015 neuroscience study commissioned by Canada Post used EEG and eye-tracking with 270 participants. Direct mail took 21% less mental effort to process than an equivalent digital ad, and produced roughly 70% higher unprompted brand recall. Canada Post sells mail for a living, so treat those specific numbers as industry research, separate from peer-reviewed evidence. The direction lines up with what Mangen found under tighter, independent conditions.

The same file, worth less on a screen

Of the three findings, this one reaches furthest, and it does not need touch or reading to land. It is about what happens to the value of identical content once it stops being a physical object.

Atasoy, O., & Morewedge, C. K. (2018). “Digital Goods Are Valued Less Than Physical Goods.” Journal of Consumer Research, 44(6), 1343–1357
Five experiments comparing what people will pay for a physical object against an otherwise identical digital version of the same content, including souvenir photographs, books, and films.
ParaphrasedIn all five experiments, participants valued physical versions more highly, and were willing to pay more for them, than for digital versions carrying the identical content.
ParaphrasedPsychological ownership explained the gap. Physical goods produced a stronger sense that an object was “mine” than digital goods did, and that difference in felt ownership accounted for the valuation gap beyond format alone.

None of these three studies tested a recurring member magazine. Peck and Shu used everyday consumer objects. Mangen measured school reading comprehension. Atasoy and Morewedge measured valuation of digital versus physical photos, books, and films. This report joins three separate, real findings to explain why a physical copy might beat a digital one for something like Open Road. Whether it does in practice is still open and testable, which is exactly what the linked experiment below proposes to check.

What this means for acquisition and retention

The three studies above speak to why a printed magazine gets touched, read, and kept. A newer paper, from two of the same researchers behind the touch finding, asks what that means commercially. Does a stronger feeling of ownership over something tangible change whether a customer stays?

Yoon, Y. R., Peck, J., & Shu, S. B. (2025). “Increasing Hotel Loyalty Through Psychological Ownership.” Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 66(3), 277–293
An analysis of 14,689 TripAdvisor reviews, a field experiment in a working hotel (n=82), and two controlled lab studies (combined n=1,002).
ParaphrasedAcross all three methods, guests who felt greater psychological ownership of their hotel room were more loyal to the hotel. The effect held even after controlling for how satisfied they were with the stay itself.
ParaphrasedThe authors point to letting guests customise a tangible part of the room, choosing a pillow type or the lighting at check-in, as a low-cost way to build that same feeling of ownership.

Open Road is a tangible object a member can hold, rather than a service outcome they rate. If the mechanism travels past hotel rooms, mailing a physical magazine four times a year is a recurring, low-cost touchpoint that reinforces felt ownership. That lever sits apart from whatever a member thinks of their last roadside call-out. Satisfaction scores alone would miss it.

The acquisition side is less directly tested. Peck and Shu's willingness-to-pay result and Atasoy and Morewedge's valuation gap both point in the same direction. A physical welcome pack or membership card should land a stronger first impression, and support higher perceived value, than a digital-only equivalent. None of the three studies on this page tested the signup moment itself, so treat this as a reasoned extension of proven mechanisms, short of a fourth verified finding.

Three questions worth asking before going digital-only

  1. Is this something a person keeps around, or reads once and discards?Atasoy and Morewedge's valuation gap is about objects people hold onto. A one-time transactional notice has less to gain from a physical version than something meant to sit on a shelf or a coffee table.
  2. Would the physical version actually get touched, or posted and binned?Peck and Shu's effect needs contact to happen. A printed piece that goes straight into recycling unopened never picks up the ownership benefit it would otherwise carry.
  3. Is the case for going digital-only being made on production cost alone?Digital is reliably cheaper to produce and send. That factor is real and legitimate. The research names other factors that matter alongside it.