TORONTO – The Government of Canada gets little credit where credit is due when it comes to consumers appreciating its efforts to provide them with information about the energy efficiency of products they buy, a Consumers Council of Canada research report concludes.
Consumers do value the information provided by government regulated product labelling containing energy consumption information, but many are unaware the government has a hand in the information, perhaps, as a result, giving less credence to the information in their purchasing decisions. A majority of consumers said they felt government should oversee such information.
However, consumers had trouble knowing when they were reading government-regulated energy efficiency labelling — as opposed to unregulated product claims, the report found.
Consumers also told the Council’s researchers of other kinds of product performance information they would like to see on product labels that, in some cases, they considered also to be as or more important to their purchasing decision.
“Product warranty”, “How well the product works” and “Durability/life expectancy” were found to be of high importance to consumers in choosing among products. In a specific example, consumers expressed interest in being able to learn about washing performance and water consumption on product labels for washing machines.
“Clearly Canadians are conservation-oriented and sensitive to total costs of ownership,” observed Council President Aubrey LeBlanc. “However, it is not clear a single cost of operation, such as energy consumption, will cause consumers to differentiate among products. And they seem less likely to do so if they don’t know easily the difference to them in dollars and cents.”
An executive summary and the full report Will consumers benefit from enhanced product labelling on energy efficient products? can be downloaded from the Council’s website at:
www.consumerscouncil.com/request-for-energy-labelling-report/
The Consumers Council of Canada has received funding from Industry Canada’s Contributions Program for Non-profit Consumer and Voluntary Organizations. The views expressed in this report are not necessarily those of Industry Canada or of the Government of Canada.