**3. Consumer social responsibility**

With socioeconomic progress, there has been an increase in household incomes followed by demand increase and differentiation that have stimulated the transition from a craft production to an industrial production, stimulating in turn a profound innovation of products and processes [7]. Environmental protection, seen as a capital belonging to all humanity, has made it possible to develop consumers' sensitivity toward their assets, particularly toward food products: sensitivity especially forced by scandals that have interested the agri-food sector, particularly in recent years.

Nowadays, the subjective component of the demand attributable to the preference of the consumer is subordinated to cultural and natural factors, level of education, age, and social context that takes a leading role in the market [8]. The consumer, with his/her preference and his/ her taste, is able to modulate the demand and, consequently, the market itself, structured on the basis of the variables on which the consumer focuses, ranging from quality/price ratio, to packaging of the product, to ethics of workers' rights, ecology, respect for the environment, diet, health, and so on [9].

A scenario which highlights that a consumer, with the purchase of the product, tends to satisfy more needs than in the past, ranging from food safety, in terms of compliance with hygiene rules and nutritional properties, to sustainability, in terms of use of renewable resources during the production process and in relation to respect for the living conditions of animals [10]. Lastly, as already stated, there is also the interest for safety in the workplace and the respect for workers' rights [10]. Furthermore, emphasis is placed on the dynamics of the consumption of quality products, expression of a growing 'modern consumer' sensitivity toward nutritional and ethical content: a post-modern consumer, considered as one of the main stakeholders of the company because, compared to the past, s/he chooses, buys, uses products and services in a conscious way.

The level of wealth that has characterized Western society leads individuals to make informed purchase choices, based not only on affordability, but also on issues such as quality of life and responsibility toward future generations [11]. The modern consumer becomes 'gatekeeper of the market' through actions that can be negative, positive, individual or collective: as a consequence s/he asks the companies for increasingly high quality and ethical standards. The figure of the modern consumer, that is, much more critical and careful toward the products and services offered by the market, it is one of the most significant transformations of Italian consumption patterns in recent years. This means that we are faced with a new subjectivism of consumption especially in the agricultural and agri-food sector.
