Stefanie Heinzle
Institute for the Economy and the Environment,
University of St. Gallen
Consumer survey on the new format of the European Energy Label for televisions - Comparison of an "open-end" versus a "closed" scale format

stefanie.heinzle@unisg.ch

Stefanie Heinzle is a PhD student at the university of St. Gallen and currently works as a research associate with Prof. Rolf Wüstenhagen at the Good Energies Chair for Management of Renewable Energies at the institute for the Economy and the Environment. She is writing her dissertation in the field of the influence of the ecolabelling on consumer decisions and is currently working on the project seco@home ("social, ecological and economic dimensions of a sustainable consumption in households") funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and on the European Research project BarEnergy ("Barriers for energy changes among end consumers and households"). She holds a degree in International Business Administration from the Vienna University of Economics and Business and a CEMS Master of International Management.

Consumer survey on the new format of the European Energy Label for televisions - Comparison of an "open-end" versus a "closed" scale format

Since the mid 90s a compulsory label showing the energy efficiency class for different kind of household appliances exists in the European Union were consumers given the opportunity to rate the energy efficiency of a labelled household appliance more easily. However, by fostering innovation, more and more energy-efficient products were developed so that for many product categories the highest class of the scale has already been achieved or even surpassed. Having become a victim of its own success with too many appliances crowded in the top of the scale, the EU Energy Label is now about to be revised by the Commission. The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the effect of two discussed labelling schemes on consumer decisions of investigated choices for televisions. We are aiming to demonstrate the difference in magnitude of the effect of both schemes in realistic choice experiments in order to define how to best move forward from a policy and a marketing perspective.