RE:Consolidation Effect? To my knowledge, no. I think it's simply a mathematical event essentially to increase decimal points for tracking purposes. IE. If it decayed down to $0.10 per share price, movements would be limited to 10% changes even if the underlying VIX only moved say 1%. In this case it would not accurately track the VIX like it would be able to at $100.00/share (exhanges limit to basically 2 decimal points).
Another reason I can surmise is that many brokers increase their commissions for "penny-stocks" or securities below $2/share (at least mine does).
I'm not sure if these are the official reasons, but they're 2 that I can surmise from my own reasoning.