Research and analysis

Online Choice Architecture: How digital design can harm competition and consumers

Two papers from the CMA's Behavioural Hub discussing and summarising evidence on online choice architecture (OCA) and how it potentially causes harm.

• From: Competition and Markets Authority
• Published: 5 April 2022

Documents

Online Choice Architecture: how digital design can harm competition and consumers

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Evidence review of Online Choice Architecture and consumer and competition harm

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Evidence review of Online Choice Architecture and consumer and competition harm (printable version)

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Details

Read more in our blog: Online choice architecture - how do we end up making decisions we don’t want to make?

Online choice architecture (OCA) is the environment in which people act, including the presentation and placement of choices and the design of interfaces. An example of an OCA practice is how the ranking of options, for example search results, impacts consumer choices which may also impact competition between businesses.

As part of the OCA programme of work the CMA has published 2 papers on OCA. Both papers explore OCA practices and their potential harms for consumers and competition:

• The discussion paper “Online Choice Architecture: how digital design can harm competition and consumers” provides an overview of what OCA is and its links with related concepts like ‘dark patterns’, the types of OCA practice that are prevalent, a taxonomy for OCA practices, and potential harms illustrated by case studies of investigations conducted by the CMA and others. The paper is intended to encourage debate and discussion, exploring how OCA can be understood and addressed.
• The Evidence Review paper “Evidence Review of Online Choice Architecture and Consumer and Competition Harm” provides a detailed summary of the growing academic and regulatory evidence related to 21 OCA practices in the taxonomy. It is intended to be a reference material to help authorities, businesses and others get a deeper understanding of OCA.

Both papers discuss the interactions between the use of OCA and algorithmic systems furthering the CMA’s discussion of this area in Algorithms: How they can reduce competition and harm consumers.

The CMA’s Behavioural Hub sits within the Data, Technology and Analytics (DaTA) Unit which also has functions covering data science and engineering, algorithmic systems insights and wider technology insights.

If you are interested in receiving updates on the CMA’s OCA programme of work including forthcoming events, please contact behavioural.hub@cma.gov.uk

Published 5 April 2022