The invention relates to a design method of an elastic network constraint self-interpretation sparse representation classifier. The method comprises the following steps: training samples are read, the training samples are linearly transformed to a high-dimensional kernel space, each type of the training samples are learnt in the high-dimensional space, a contribution (i.e., a weight) made by each individual in the type of the training sample to constructing a sub-space of the type of the training samples is found, and a dictionary is constructed by a product of the type of the training samples and a weight matrix; and elastic network coefficient coding of test samples in the kernel space is obtained through training the obtained sparse representation dictionaries, and finally, the test samples are fitted by use of each type of the dictionaries and the elastic network sparse coding corresponding to the dictionaries, fitting errors are calculated, and the type of minimum fitting errors are the type of the test samples. According to the invention, the method is integrated with the advantages of ridge regression and lasso regression, sparse coding features of the samples are enabled to sparse, the fitting errors are also quite small, classification errors are effectively reduced, and the identification performance of a classifier is improved.