Study within the CO:DINA project funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) Sustainability and consumer protection by design in digital consumption processes

Platforms are powerful, and they are being criticized – for driving fake news, hate speech, and being a haven for 'surveillance capitalism'. However, a blind spot in the debate on platforms so far has been the ecological impact of platforms on our daily lives. Platforms and online commerce are increasingly shaping our private consumption and are thus becoming an important lever for climate, environmental and resource protection in everyday life. They offer many opportunities to support us as consumers in making ecological choices and meeting our needs with less environmental consumption. But the reality is still different – advertising-financed business models and the commercial growth logic of companies make social media platforms, search engines and online stores strive to constantly increase our consumption, without regard for climate protection and resource consumption.

Against this background, the Wuppertal Institute commissioned ConPolicy with a research project as part of the CO:DINA research line 'Digital-ecological statecraft'. The aim of this project was to investigate how the existing system design of platforms affects consumer interests and societal interests. On the one hand, it was clarified which concerns already exist with regard to consumer protection, and on the other hand, how sustainable consumption can be promoted by strengthening consumer protection. From this, political approaches were developed on how platforms can be made more sustainable and consumer-friendly. Based on the project results, prototypes of collaborative political learning were developed in governance innovation labs involving experts and stakeholders. 

This resulted in the following work steps for the project: First, the state of research on the effects of platforms of consumer interests and sustainable consumption were reviewed, and instruments and measures for strengthening consumer interests that have been discussed politically to date were described. Subsequently, principles for a sustainable and consumer-friendly system design of platforms in online commerce were derived from the previously identified deficits. In the last step, political intervention options for an approach to regulate platforms in a sustainable and consumer-friendly way were presented. Methodologically, a combination of literature analysis, conceptual legal policy work and expert interviews were applied in the work steps.

The Publication can be found here.