The Consumer Empowerment Index

Abstract

The 2007-2013 EU Consumer Policy Strategy emphasizes the importance of a better understanding of how consumers behave and sets as a main objective “to empower EU consumers”. A thorough knowledge of the capacities, information and assertiveness of consumers is considered crucial for being able to design and develop policies for consumer protection. Using the special Eurobarometer Survey n. 342, the DG Joint Research Center (together with DG Health and Consumers) constructed a composite measure of consumer empowerment encompassing the plurality of aspects implied by the EU policy Strategy. The resulting Consumer Empowerment Index describes consumer empowerment along three main dimensions: Consumer skills, Awareness of consumer legislation and Consumer engagement. The Index covers all 27 European countries plus Iceland and Norway. This report illustrates the different steps on the construction of the Index: the quantification of survey questions, the univariate and multivariate analysis of the dataset, the definition of an operational framework as well the selection of weights. Robustness analysis against alternative methodological choices is included. The relationship between socio economic characteristics of respondents and their level of empowerment is also presented with the aim of characterising the most crucial socio-economic determinants of empowerment and foster the debate on consumer protection.