Social representations of consumer indebtedness, differences by gender, age and income groups

Abstract

Indebtedness is a serious and growing social problem afflicting consumers around the world. In this context, the objective of this work is to know the social representations of indebtedness and whether this representation differs according to the socio-demographic characteristics of the population. To achieve the research objectives, an exploratory-descriptive study was carried out with 831 individuals, of both sexes, different ages and social strata, in a city in northeastern Brazil. The main results showed that the phenomenon of indebtedness goes beyond the strictly financial aspects, once semantic categories were raised, involving cognitive and affective factors, as well as economic-financial structures. The complex and heterogeneous representations found address very broad issues ranging from behavioral causes, purchases and consumerism, through the financial and credit system, issues of political-economic circumstances to situations that affect people, in terms of health, and / or cause feelings of shame and / or malaise in general.