Is the ‘behavioural turn’ in consumer law taken by Dutch courts?

This contribution briefly traces the ‘behavioural turn’ in EU Consumer law. We argue that the multilevel-nature of this paradigm shift is currently underappreciating the role of national courts in giving traction to the behavioural sciences paradigm. In a jurisprudential analysis of cases applying the Unfair Commercial Practice Directive in the Netherlands in respect of the average consumer, we find that Dutch courts do not deploy behavioural insights. Instead, they use three approaches to adjudicate unfair commercial practices, which we illustrate and discuss: information-based (type and quality), duty-based (duty on the consumer or duty on the trader), and consumer effect-based.