Evaluation Utopia City Guide

The task of the IÖW is the evaluation of a project of the Utopia AG called “Utopia City Guide”, where national yellow pages are developed, that are internet based and refer to green products and services only. The project is supported by Deutschen Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU).

In a first step the Utopia City Guide is introduced in three cities (Munich, Berlin, Hamburg) and promoted through several public relation measures. The internet-based “green pages” are in the centre of the project, in which the online-community of www.utopia.de serves as the core filter that comments on and rates the shops.

Because of the pioneer character of the project, the funding institution (DBU) has commissioned the evaluation of the project. On one hand, the evaluation is to improve the implementation of the project (formative evaluation). On the other hand, it is assessed how an instrument like the Utopia City Guide can contribute to the promotion of sustainable consumption patterns (summative evaluation).