Economics, Social Responsibility and Consumers: The Ethical Perception

The current economic framework increasingly requires verifying the ethical values of the foundations of the economic behaviours of individual consumers and organizations. Even on a historical level, the financial crisis dramatically brought to light a perception of the behaviour of the link between ethics, consumers and enterprises that differs from previous years. Rediscovering the importance of ethics in economic choices first requires a focused historical analysis, then the capability to represent it and thereafter verifying how its manifestations change over time. The proposed historical analysis is developed by addressing the ethics of consumers, of corporate social responsibility and microcredit. An overview of the key contributions allows structuring the scale in support of empirical research aimed at over two thousand university students. Their responses before and after the financial crisis contribute to the current debate, which is particularly important since it is linked to those who will shape tomorrow's economy.