Two articles by CIBEL member Dr Anton Didenko on Consumer Data Right and consumer trust have been published on Monash University Law Review 2024 - Volume 50 (Issue 1). The first article ‘Australia’s Consumer Data Right and Its Implications for Consumer Trust’ conducts an in-depth analysis of Australia’s Consumer Data Right (‘CDR’) legal framework by focusing on the concept of ‘consumer trust’. It maps the key enablers of consumer trust within the CDR and demonstrates that each of these enablers is associated with deficiencies that may negatively affect consumer trust in the longer term. The article argues that the CDR framework should proactively address these deficiencies even if they have not caused significant detriment to consumers in the early years of operation of the regime when participation levels remain low. It makes two important contributions to the existing legal scholarship. First, through a detailed analysis of ‘consumer trust’ within the context of the CDR framework, it fosters a better understanding of the broader concept of ‘trust’ in law. Second, it enables a rethinking of the role consumer trust plays in Australia’s CDR and can inform future reforms of the CDR regime. A companion article published in the same issue builds on this analysis to offer proposals for legal reform in Australia.
The second article, ‘New Ways to Reinforce Consumer Trust in Australia’s Consumer Data Right’, builds on the analysis from the above article and argues that the concept of ‘consumer trust’ can be used as a signpost of the CDR’s success. While Australia’s Consumer Data Right (‘CDR’) legal framework has been hailed as ‘the biggest reform to consumer law in a generation’, there is no accepted measure or benchmark against which its efficiency can be evaluated. The article establishes consumer trust as a key enabler of social change envisaged by the CDR, performs a retrospective analysis of the factors which inhibit consumer trust in the current CDR framework and proposes legal reforms that should help overcome them. This article argues that some of the underlying challenges can only be more effectively addressed via economy-wide legal reforms, including an introduction of prescribed data transmission channels for transfers of valuable data (except between individual consumers). It is hoped the proposals formulated in this article will inform future reform directions for the CDR and consumer policy more generally.
You can read more about Dr Anton Didenko research on SSRN, Google Scholar and LinkedIn .