While the different positive and negative impacts of digitalization for consumers’ everyday lives gain much attention from both policy-makers and academia, the question on how digital technologies can be applied to better attain consumer policy goals has so far earned comparatively little consideration.
In their paper Prof. Dr. Christian Thorun and Dr. Jana Diels try to fill this gap by analysing the potential of what they call consumer protection technologies. With this term they describe digital technologies that are used to foster consumer policy objectives. They then argue that these new digital technologies can significantly contribute to the attainment of priority consumer policy outcomes, namely consumer protection, consumer empowerment as well as consumer law and rights enforcement. The authors argue that both more awareness of consumer policy actors and academics for the potential of these digital technologies as well as a systematic review of consumer protection technologies are needed.
The article was published in the Journal of Consumer Policy.