Emily Carr University and research firm Vision Critical recently conducted a study over 500 Pinterest users to determine the social media starlet’s effect on purchasing, and the results showed a high correlation between pinning and purchasing with 21% of users reporting that they had bought items they had pinned before.

Unexpectedly however, Pinterest’s impact on offline purchasing is higher than on online with 16% of users having said that they had purchased items they had pinned offline versus 12% for online.

Other findings suggest that purchasers tend to be more active users than non purchasers. They visit the site and pin almost 3 times as much. Additionally, early adopters, those who signed up for the service prior 2012, have been driving the pin and purchase correlation more than recent sign ups who exhibit weaker activity on the site and subsequently less purchasing.

Finally, it seems that Pinterest is here to stay with 3 out of 4 users saying that they expect to keep using the service for the foreseeable future and 70% claiming that they will try to get their friends signed up.

(Infographic courtesy of visioncritical)