CRC/TRR 190/2: Transparency and product choice in Digital Environments (SP A05)

The project studies the impact of transparency on consumer decisions. Raising the regulatory requirements of transparency helps consumers to avoid biases and to make more informed choices, which needs to be quantified and traded off against the regulation’s cost. The project continues its mix of empirical methods but shifts its focus towards digital environments. In them, the current regulatory debate is trying to catch up with dynamically changing markets, e.g., via the planned European AI Act. The research program is structured into three parts: (i) transparency in digital recommendations, (ii) transparency and platform monetization, and (iii) transparency of data use and data sources.