Call for Proposals: Consumer Protection Research Initiative

Areas of Research

• They fund work addressing four core research areas:
  • Fraud prevention and detection:
    • Evaluating interventions to reduce consumer vulnerability to digital fraud and scams, including innovative and scalable education campaigns, fraud detection tools, and behavioral nudges.
    • Assessing the effectiveness of SupTech (supervisory technology) tools that regulators, financial service providers or payment systems can use to identify and/or prevent fraud.
  • High prices, price transparency and market competition:
    • Testing mechanisms to improve price transparency in digital financial products, such as simplified disclosure requirements, nudges, or standardized fee structures.
    • Assessing how hidden fees, price shrouding, or bundling practices affect consumer decision-making and financial well-being.
  • Over-indebtedness and responsible digital credit:
    • Evaluating regulatory and market-based solutions to prevent overindebtedness, such as credit information sharing, loan wait times, nudges, and flexible repayment structures.
    • Studying the impact of different credit product designs (e.g., mobile instant credit, buy now pay later) on consumer welfare, financial stress, and repayment behavior.
  • Complaints redress mechanisms:
    • Examining the effectiveness of various consumer complaint resolution channels, including helplines, chatbots, ombudsman services, and dispute mediation platforms.
    • Identifying barriers that prevent consumers—especially women and lowincome users—from seeking redress for financial misconduct.
• This year, they are particularly interested in research that examines:
  • Gender disparities in consumer protection, including solutions that may be particularly effective at mitigating risks and building trust for women.
  • Studies focused on productive credit, particularly work focused on reducing risk for small business owners and smallholder farmers.
  • The role of agents in promoting consumer protection in digital finance, for example in improving transparency, reducing overcharging, or preventing fraud.

Funding Information

• Small Projects (Pilots, Add-ons, and Lab/Admin Data Experiments): up to $75,000 per project.
• Full Impact Evaluations: up to $300,000 per project.
• CPRI will award a maximum of $375,000 for small projects and $900,000 for full impact evaluations.

Eligibility Criteria

• Countries: They will prioritize proposals from the Consumer Protection Research Initiative’s ten focus countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Tanzania, and Uganda. Proposals from other LMICs will be considered if they score highly in other evaluation criteria and demonstrate that their findings are generalizable, particularly to their priority countries.
• Research team composition: The CPRI prioritizes proposals that include researcher(s) based in the country where the project will take place. Researchers with local expertise and lived experience bring unique insights which can enhance the study’s relevance and impact.
• Researcher qualifications: At least one member of the research team must be affiliated with a research institution or university and either hold a PhD or be a current PhD candidate in a relevant social science or engineering discipline, such as economics, statistics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, public health, education, or computer science.
• Human subjects research ethics: All studies funded through this call must obtain Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval or a formal exemption if applicable (e.g., if the project is deemed extremely low risk, such as a survey-only project not involving personally identifiable information).

Deadlines

• Optional Expressions of Interest are due May 4, 2025 and full proposals are due June 15, 2025.

For more information, visit Innovations for Poverty Action.