European consumers’ attitudes on services of general interest : accessibility, price and quality

The research question addressed by this paper is a simple one: are European consumers happy with the services provided by the utilities after two decades of reforms? We focus on electricity, gas, water, telephone in the EU 15 Member States. The variables we analyse are consumers’ satisfaction with accessibility, price, and quality, as reported in three waves of Eurobarometer survey, 2000-2002-2004 , comprising around 47,000 observations. We use ordered logit models to analyze the impact of privatization and regulatory reforms, controlling for individual and country characteristics. Our results do not support a systematic association between consumers’ satisfaction and the standard reform package of privatization, vertical disintegration, liberalization