On September 18th, stakeholders from academia, consumer associations, lobby associations and politics discussed the relation between the instruments used and the understanding of addressees in consumer policy interventions. They debated which image of consumers currently exists and how this image relates to the instruments chosen in consumer policy.
The conference was organized by Dr. Kathrin Loer, who leads a research project on this topic at FernUniversität in Hagen.
In this context, ConPolicy project manager Dr. Max Vetter presented two case studies. Based on data collected by ConPolicy, he firstly showed why consumers often find the present German rental control regulation difficult to use (you can find a factsheet on this topic here).
In a second case study, he addressed the changing image of consumers in the field of consumer advice and consumer information, resulting in district-based approaches. Here, ConPolicy can draw from insights gained over the two-year consulting and evaluation of the district-based approach in Cologne (you can find the evaluation report here).
In the afternoon, the conference was rounded off by a panel discussion of policy suggestions as well as obstacles for implementation.