An Overview of Academic Consumer Interest Research in Canada (ca02843)

Part Two: Academic Consumer Interest Research in Canada

Programs in consumer studies/sciences

Three decades ago, Kroll and Hunt presented consumer-interest study as an emerging discipline that was at the interdiscplinary stage of its evolution, where practitioners from related disciplines recognize the desirability of coordinated efforts. The authors anticipated a next stage, i.e. that the consumer interest area could become more than an interdisciplinary area of study:

Kroll and Hunt had suggested that, while not crucial, establishing an appropriate title for this field of research could contribute to the general acceptance of the field's uni-discplinary potential. There is still no single, commonly recognized title for a CIR-related academic field, as illustrated by Figure 1. This lack of a single title makes it difficult to assess the presence of consumer-interest programs in higher education institutions.

Today, only the Universities of Guelph and Laval can be readily identified as having programs with consumer studies / sciences as their principle raison d'etre.^{Footnote 17} However, relevant programs likely exist in other (sub)disciplines, such as the traditionally consumer-focused disciplines of home economics and human ecology. For example, Smith and de Zwart 2010 noted that seven universities Canada-wide offered after degree programs in home economics/family studies teacher education (University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, University of Manitoba, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education / University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario, York, Mount St Vincent) and two universities offered concurrent programs (Saskatchewan and Moncton). The identification of all potentially relevant departments is not straightforward, given various changes in nomenclature and restructuring having occurred in home economics and consumer sciences programs.^{Footnote 18} Special CIR-relevant programs may also exist in various university departments across Canada, such as the internatioal, graduate-level Summer School in Consumer Law that was co-organized in 2011 and 2009 by the Groupe de recherche en droit international et comparé de la consommation (GREDICC), a research unit within the University of Quebec in Montreal's (UQAM) Faculty of Law and Political Science.^{Footnote 19}

Nevertheless, today's situation seems to reflect a downward trend in various CIR-related programs, which brings with it important consequences. In her review of the status of consumer education in Canada, McGregor 2000 noted that:

Such concerns about teacher preparation in CIR-relevant (sub)disciplines are still present, as noted more recently in a 2010 study of home economics teacher education. Smith and Zwart 2010 illustrated "that the problem of the declining supply of home economics teachers is a world-wide phenomenon" and highlighted issues in Canada, in the context of the dismantling or re-structuring of many home economics programs:

In their analysis of the content of Canadian university consumer education courses.^{Footnote 20} McGregor and MacDonald 1997 had also noted concerns with nature of the programs, as their results inferred that "any student intending to get a BED [Bachelor of Education] to teach family studies / home economics was provided an opportunity to learn money and resource management, decision making and financial planning but less so consumer protection and advocacy" (reported in McGregor 2000).

In 2008, Industry Canada undertook a summary analysis^{Footnote 21} of the course titles and descriptions from the 92 Canadian public and private not-for-profit universities and university-degree level colleges that were listed on the website of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).^{Footnote 22} The analysis found 131 undergraduate courses with 'consumer or consommateur' in the title.^{Footnote 23} Eighty-one of these, or just over 60%, were found to be consumer / buyer behaviour courses, often taught in schools of commerce or business, with an emphasis on consumer decision processes and the influence of social, cultural, and psychological factors on how consumers behave in marketplace transactions. In comparison, only twenty-four courses had a focus on consumer protection or consumer legal issues. Overall, courses appeared less geared toward the consumer interest.

A similar trend towards emphasizing commercial interests in consumer-related programs was noted in a 2005 report on The Need for Postgraduate Education in Consumer Affairs in the European Union: "While they do indeed deal with consumer issues, their predominant logic is that of the marketing and sale of products and services rather than that of the protection and empowerment of the consumer." (Quici et al., 2005). Commissioned by the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection (DG SANCO) of the European Commission (EC), the report recommended the creation of a European master-degree program in consumer affairs, a proposal that was realized in 2009 (see textbox).

Funding of Academic CIR

The absence of a clearly-defined title for the CIR domain also makes it difficult to analyze the funding arrangements under which it takes place. In terms of public funding, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and various public policy entities (primarily government departments and agencies) are likely the major source of funds for specific CIR projects.

SSHRC provides detailed electronic information on all of its funding. However, a reliably complete picture of the Council's funding of CIR work cannot be guaranteed, due to the lack of straightforward search terms (a single discipline title, or unique specialized vocabulary). Nonetheless, a CIR search was conducted by Industry Canada, using 'consumer or consommateur' in the 'title and keyword' field of the SSHRC database. For contribution year 2010–2011, the results from this broad consumer search included 94 research projects, dispersed across 16 various disciplines. Figure 2 illustrates how the number of 'consumer' search results has grown, in parallel with an increase in the number of disciplines associated to the results.While the total number of 'consumer or consommateur' results in a given fiscal year picks up duplicates from the previous year (i.e. projects that received payments over more than one fiscal year), this nonetheless represents one base for consideration to identify potential scholars who have been involved in CIR and insights that may be relevant for consumer policy.

Figure 2: Results for 'title and keyword' search using 'consumer or consommateur' in SSHRC database, by fiscal year

 

Source: Industry Canada searches on the SSHRC Awards Search Engine

However, the use of a simple "consumer or consommateur" keyword search is a very imperfect approach, and subject to other constraints associated to the search tool. For example, the 'consumer' subset of 94 projects compares to a total of more than 9,600 projects that received some SSHRC funding in 2010–2011. While not captured by a 'consumer' search, a number of these other projects undoubtedly have some relevance to CIR, but they are not easily identifiable.

In addition, while three of the 94 results for 2010–2011 that are illustrated in Figure 2 refer to Canada Research Chairs^{Footnote 24}, further investigation of the Canada Research Chairs' own database^{Footnote 25} indicates that other Chairs have definite importance in terms of CIR-related work.^{Footnote 26} Indeed, the "consumer or consommateur" keyword search on the Canada Research Chairs program's database provided many more results than the "consumer or consommateur" search in the SSHRC Awards Search Engine. A greater number of research chairs would have been identified with the use of additional keywords such as "consumption", "marketplace" or a number of other CIR-related terms. However, the CIR-relevance of such expanded search results would need to be assessed.^{Footnote 27}

As previously highlighted (under Linkages to consumer policy-making), academic CIR can also be commissioned in the context of formal advisory or consultative work in the public sector. In addition, in the regular course of their monitoring and analytical work, government departments periodically contract with experts to obtain subject-specific reports. However, it is very difficult to identify these reports, let alone analyze the CIR-related results obtained through this approach. The analysis provided under contract to policy makers is not necessarily published in stand-alone documents, and thus may not always be readily located through online or other searches.^{Footnote 28}

Researchers involved in CIR may also be tapping into various other sources of funding. At the provincial level, for example, researchers in Québec can also access funds through the Fonds de recherche du Québec– Société et culture.^{Footnote 29} A CIR-specific foundation also exists: the Fondation Claude Masse's mission is to support research into and the dissemination of knowledge related to law, economics and other fields that study consumption and how markets work, and to promote the development of and compliance with legislation pertaining to consumption, competition and the workings of markets.^{Footnote 30} These and other examples further extend the number of disperse sources that would need to be explored for a more detailed review of CIR in Canada.

Publication of Canadian academic CIR

There are currently no Canadian-based peer-reviewed scholarly journals specifically dedicated to CIR. An exception from the past was the Canadian Home Economics Journal, which published from 1950 up until the Canadian Home Economics Association's dissolution in 2003 and included a refereed section for original academic research articles.^{Footnote 31} That is not to say that publication of Canadian academic CIR is nonexistent today. Canadian academic CIR has been published in such international publications as the Journal of Consumer Affairs, the Journal of Consumer Education, the Journal of Consumer Policy, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Family and Economic Issues and the International Journal of Consumer Studies. Interestingly, while some scholars have noted that publishing in such international journals has obliged them to dilute the Canadian content or focus of their work, others have never experienced this phenomenon.^{Footnote 32}

In addition, a number of CIR-related Canadian papers have been published through Canadian academic journals not specific to CIR. These include multidisciplinary publications (e.g., Canadian Social Science) as well as disciplinary-specific journals (e.g., Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics). Canadian academic work has similarly been published in international non-CIR-specific journals.

There are also consumer-interest related topic areas defined in the open-access multi-field Social Science Research Network (SSRN) eLibrary^{Footnote 34} which consists largely of working papers or pre-publication versions of scholarly articles, including items from Canadian researchers; there are also relevant abstracting eJournals on the site. Examples of CIR-relevant SSRN network elements include: Consumer Law eJournal^{Footnote 35}, Microeconomics: Intertemporal Consumer Choice & Savings eJournal, Consumer Social Responsibility eJournal, and Behavioural Marketing eJournal. SSRN is an increasingly popular outlet for academic researchers (over 200,000 authors have contributed to SSRN, as of August 30, 2012). While an open access service such as SSRN may not be as valuable to academics in terms of career advancement (e.g. may not meet the publication standards required for the purposes of tenure), it can play an important role in research dissemination and collaboration. In their survey work with European journal authors, Fry et al. 2011 concluded that the central role of peer-reviewed journal articles in academic careers is not diminishing. However, they also noted that authors within the social sciences, humanities and arts were among the most likely to feel that depositing works in an open access repository (OAR) was definitely worthwhile.^{Footnote 36}

Wanting to further examine the level and comparative status of academic consumer research in Canada, Industry Canada commissioned Science-Metrix to provide a bibliometric analysis of peer-reviewed journals. The objectives of the study were to examine the quantity of published Canadian academic work on consumer issues research, and the split between consumer-interest and commercial-interest work, and then to compare these numbers to those in other leading countries in this field. The bibliometric study covered the period from 1996 to 2007 and was based on an assessment of research output published in peer-reviewed papers indexed in the Scopus database.^{Footnote 37} In the absence of discipline-specific terminology, the Science-Metrix methodology also relied on a "consumer" only search.

The study concluded that Canada had some degree of specialization in consumer issues research, ranking 9th among the leading countries in the field (see Figure 3). In order to estimate the proportion of policy-relevant papers, the abstracts of a sample of these consumer issues papers were further analyzed to categorize them as relevant to policy, business or general interest in consumer issues research, or whether they were outside of the field.^{Footnote 38} Based on this attempt to quantify the distribution of CIR papers, Canadian researchers appear to publish a much smaller proportion of their papers on issues related to public policy compared to other leading countries—there was a greater emphasis on the commercial aspects of CIR in Canada.^{Footnote 39}

This is similar to the trend previously noted with respect to consumer-related university courses where there was an emphasis on courses concerned with the consumer marketplace issues such as how and why consumers purchase goods or services (under Programs in consumer studies/sciences).

Figure 3: Specialization in Consumer Issues Research by Country, 1996–2007

 

Specialization Index (above 0 is specialized)^{Footnote 40}

Source: Reproduced from Archambault et al. 2008.

As we have seen, there are a number of indications that a significant level of Canadian academic CIR exists. However, there are challenges in identifying it across a range of disciplines and publication outlets, and its focus may not be on the public policy issues that are the subject of this Update. This does not imply that the other angles of research are irrelevant—insights from the commercial perspective can also be useful to the making of public policy if they reflect, at least in part, the interests of consumers. A number of other contributions could therefore likely be identified, upon further examination, and would enhance the scope of CIR in Canada.