The Impact of Consumer Protection in the Digital Age: Evidence from the European Union

Anja Rösner, Justus Haucap and Ulrich Heimeshoff

No 8081, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We investigate the effect of an EU-wide consumer protection regulation on consumer trust as well as consumer behavior. The Unfair Commercial Practice Directive (UCPD) was implemented by EU member states between 2007 and 2010. We utilize data from the Special and Flash Eurobarometer for the years between 2006 and 2014 and experts’ evaluation on consumer protection levels before the introduction of the regulation. This rich data set allows us to apply a difference-in-difference estimator with multiple time periods. We find a significant relationship between the introduction of the UCPD and consumer trust and cross-border purchases for countries with a low consumer protection level before the introduction of the UCPD. The relationship increases over time and stays then relatively constant.

Keywords: consumer protection; UCPD; B2C; e-commerce; consumer trust; cross-border purchase (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D18 K20 L50 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-ict, nep-int, nep-law, nep-pay and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp8081.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of consumer protection in the digital age: Evidence from the European Union (2020)
Working Paper: The impact of consumer protection in the digital age: Evidence from the European Union (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8081

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().