Is Responsible Consumption Compatible with Economic Crisis?

Market economy intrinsically features mass consumption. Individual consumption decisions should be free and it would be desirable they were carried out in an ethical and responsible way. On the other hand, taking into account that in economic crisis periods authorities ask citizens to keep on consuming so as to stem the private consumption reduction, some natural questions arise: What is responsible consumption? What a responsible consumption behaviour pattern under strict economic constraints should be? Would it be more appropriate to talk about socially responsible products instead of responsible consumption? In addition, consumer information is a basic requirement to be able to choose. But, in spite of the fact that information is acknowledged as a consumer's basic right, its practice effectiveness is not enough yet. All in all, in this work in progress we propose a future research consisting of the analysis of the information obtained from three different groups of people representing opposite economic situations so as to get a deeper knowledge of what responsible consumption represents for them in an economic crisis scenario depending on information access and social values in Spain.