02/06/2024

ConPolicy survey on the occasion of the Safer Internet Day 2024
Consumers want more transparency and human contacts instead of chatbots

This year's Safer Internet Day took place on February 6, 2024. In this context the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) and Bitkom e.V. jointly held a conference. The topic of the conference was "Fit & Fair by Design - does European consumer protection need an update?".

On behalf of the BMUV, ConPolicy conducted a representative online survey with N=1,009 participants on the occasion of the conference. The aim of the survey was to investigate the perception and assessment of potentially unfair practices in the digital space and to reflect on solutions.

It can be stated that many consumers have already experienced unfair practices in the digital space. This includes, for example, impairing advertisements, behavior-based prices or methods that aim at users using services longer than intended. As a result, the practices created a feeling of discomfort and disappointed consumers' trust.

In addition, consumers have high expectations of digital offers and services and in particular want their data not to be sold. All suggestions made in the survey for future developments of digital services reached very broad approval among consumers. In particular, access to a human contact person instead of a chatbot and no unauthorized sharing of data are particularly important to consumers.

The results of the survey are published here (German). Further analyses and the survey design can be found here.

There is also an article from the Handelsblatt that, among other things, deals with the survey results and classifies them politically.

02/01/2024

Presentation of results and workshop on sustainable commuting
Invitation to the final conference "MOBITAT 2050 – Living and Working 2050"

Our MOBITAT 2050 project will come to an end in early summer 2024. How can commuter mobility be made sustainable? What will the residential and workplace locations of the future look like? How do we assess the sustainability of commuting? These are questions that we investigated as part of the research project using the example of the FrankfurtRhineMain metropolitan area.

We - that is the ConPolicy - Institute for Consumer Policy, the Institute of Transport Research of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Institute of Urban Planning and Transport of RWTH Aachen University (ISB), the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Heidelberg (IFEU), and the Society for Integrated Transport and Mobility Management Frankfurt Rhine-Main Region (ivm).

We invite all interested parties from practice and science, from the region and beyond, to view the results and reflect on them together with us.

The conference will take place

• on February 20, 2024
• 09:30 am - 3:45 pm
• at the House of Logistics and Mobility, Frankfurt am Main

Please register by February 15, 2024 at mobitat@ivm-rheinmain.de. Please also forward this invitation to interested colleagues in your company.

You can find more information about the program here.

01/31/2024

ConPolicy study for DIN Consumer Council published
Consumers want clear labelling for online marketplaces

Online marketplaces are popular – they now account for almost 50 per cent of online retail sales. At the same time, online marketplaces also pose specific challenges for consumer protection.

Against this background, ConPolicy was commissioned by the DIN Consumer Council to investigate consumer problems in transactions via online marketplaces by means of a literature analysis and a representative online survey and to derive recommendations for action for consumer policy and tandardization from the results.

Dr Christiane Rohleder, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection: "The study by the DIN Consumer Council clearly shows that consumers expect online marketplaces to take more responsibility for the products sold there and for the platforms to prevent dubious business practices. It is important that consumers are clearly informed before making a purchase that it is a purchase on an online marketplace and not an online shop and what responsibilities result from this."

Michaela Hildebrandt, Project Manager at the DIN Consumer Council, drew the following conclusions from the study: "The study not only provides concrete recommendations for action for consumer policy, but also derives recommendations for standardisation. It is striking that online marketplaces still receive little attention within standardisation."

Further information on the project can be found here.
The study results can be accessed here.
The joint press release of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection and DIN Consumer Council can be found here.