04/05/2023

Workshop on mobility and digital infrastructure.
ConPolicy at the BDI InnoNation Festival

Transportation of the future should be sustainable, connected and safe. But can we achieve these goals within the limits of our current systems and notions of mobility? Are our infrastructures and mindset ready for profound innovations in transport and logistics? Together with the participants of the InnoNation Festival of the BDI, ConPolicy project manager Dr. Annette Cerulli-Harms will find answers to these questions through examples from Urban Air Mobility as well as autonomous and connected driving.

The InnoNation Festival will take place on May 3, 2023 at the Alte Münze in Berlin. Together with numerous innovators from business, science, politics and society, the BDI offers a framework to advance the InnoNation. A dynamic community will emerge through open exchange, solution-oriented and creative processes. Future disruptions will be highly complex. In interactive future workshops and thought experiments, the challenges of the future will be creatively addressed.

03/28/2023

European Consumer Summit 2023
ConPolicy input on consumer vulnerability and how to reach specific consumer groups

On March 28, 2023, the European Commission hosted the European Consumer Summit 2023. In the context of the summit inter alia a workshop on skills for consumers to address vulnerability was hosted.

In an input presentation, Prof. Dr. Christian Thorun, Managing Director of the ConPolicy Institute, introduced the concept of consumer vulnerability and shared insights into success factors for reaching out to specific (vulnerable) consumer groups.

In his introduction to the concept of consumer vulnerability he highlighted that within the Green Deal the European Commission had set the objective to leave no one behand in the necessary transformations. This idea was translated in the New Consumer Agenda, which states that consumers should play an active role in the green and digital transitions. Yet the reality showed that many consumers are currently insufficiently equipped to play this active role. Particularly vulnerable consumers would need to be empowered and their sills and competencies had to be stepped up. He concluded that local advice activities, which targeted particularly vulnerable consumers, could play an important role in this empowerment process. 

Based on a study that ConPolicy implemented jointly with VVA, he highlighted four success factors for organisations that seek to reach out to vulnerable consumers:

1. Tailoring the initiatives to specific consumer groups
2. Collaboration and partnerships
3. Advice at the right moment
4. Online advice development

His presentation can be found here.

03/28/2023

European Consumer Summit 2023
ConPolicy input on consumer policy in times of significant challenges

On March 28, 2023, the European Commission hosted the European Consumer Summit 2023. The focus of the Summit was on moving ahead while managing multiple crises.

In the context of his keynote at the beginning of the conference, Prof. Dr. Christian Thorun, Managing Director of the ConPolicy Institute, elaborated on the state of play of consumers in the European Union, trends, opportunities and challenges for consumers in the next two to five years and the implications for consumer policy. In his presentation he focused on the economic situation, digitalization and sustainability. 

Regarding the economic situation he argued that consumers – and particularly vulnerable ones – are currently under stress. The major reason for this is the historical cost of living crises. He expected that while inflation will go down in the next two years, pressure on vulnerable consumers will most likely remain high.

Speaking about digitaliziation and consumers he argued that while ever more consumers enjoyed and used a wide range of digital products and services, the imbalance of power between consumers and digital businesses was growing and citizens expected governments to act. When looking into the future, he expected digital asymmetry to grow and that less choice and competition was a real threat.

With regard to the necessary sustainability transformation he highlighted that we were currently far away from consuming responsibly and had to significantly speed up our efforts if we wanted to meet our 2030 targets.  

He concluded that consumer policy needed a new mindset and strategic Sustainable Development Goals-guided approach, that we had to secure consumer acceptance and support, applied a user-centric approach in policy making and used digital technology and business innovation for good.

His presentation can be downloaded here.

03/24/2023

Forum article in the GAIA special issue 'sustainable digitalization'
Publication on the responsibility of digital platforms for sustainable consumption

Current digital business models create incentives to increase consumption and therefore run counter to sustainable development objectives. To date, European Union platform regulation initiatives do not systematically address this challenge.

In this context, Dr. Otmar Lell, project manager at ConPolicy, and Dr. Maike Gossen, research associate at the Department of Social-Ecological Transformation and Sustainable Digitalization at the Technical University of Berlin, investigated the impact of digital platforms on consumer interests and sustainability objectives.

In a forum contribution to the journal GAIA, they propose a systemic policy approach with the introduction of positive accountability to ensure that digital platforms steer their impact on consumer interests and sustainable development objectives in a positive direction and thus support sustainable consumption in the digital age. 

The forum paper is available for download as an open access publication here.