Strengthening the ecological design as a purchasing criterion for consumers

The overall objective of the project is to strengthen ecological design as a purchase criterion for consumers by improving the consistency of consumer expectations, product development and business communication. It will also investigate to what extent sustainable purchasing behavior can be promoted by selectively designing and highlighting specific environmentally relevant product properties, in contrast to the more holistic approach of some eco-labels. The project consists of the following steps:

• Assessment of consumer expectations on (ecologically designed) products based on literature and a consumer survey, including comparison with the results of LCA-based approaches to determining relevant environmental characteristics (WP 1);
• Workshop with consumer and company representatives as well as providers of user-integrated product design in order to investigate how user-integrated product design may be used to better accomodate consumer expectations in ecological product design and business communication (WP 2);
• Develop guidelines for companies on how they can accommodate consumer expectations with regard to ecodesign of products and take them into account in business communication (WP 3);
• Develop proposals on how the consumer perspective can be made more visible in the Federal Ecodesign Prize (WP 4).