Consumer Decisions under High Information Load: How Can Legal Rules Improve Search Behavior and Decision Quality?

EU consumer protection legislation is designed to enable consumers to make "good" contract decisions in the market place. This legislation heavily relies on the model of rational homo oeconomicus: It assumes that consumers want to and can process large amounts of information in order to maximize their own outcomes, and requires businesses to provide a wealth of information to their customers. In an interdisciplinary study conducted by lawyers and psychologists, we wanted to describe the precise flaws of this strategy, based on the EU consumer protection regulation presently in force, and to formulate assumptions about promising regulatory means to overcome them.