Trust and its role in the attitudes of the population's economic behavior (case study of the Vologda oblast)

In modern conditions, more and more attention is paid to intangible and non-economic factors in the development of regional socio-economic systems. The purpose of the study is to characterize the influence of trust in the system of attitudes of the population’ economic behavior. We solved the following tasks: we identified approaches to the study of trust based on the fundamental scientific works of Russian and foreign scientists, gave an interpretation of economic attitudes; in terms of the rationalistic approach we studied how trust is realized through various forms of economic behavior; we considered how people assigned to one or another category of “trusting” can transfer the level of trust to economic institutions. We selected the data in such a way that they reflected the attitudes associated with different types of economic behavior. Scientific novelty of the research consists in analytical conclusions characterizing the role of trust in the economic attitudes of the population. The study of public opinion in the Vologda Oblast revealed that the formation of economic attitudes is influenced by trust. For example, the category of those citizens who “distrust” tends not to associate with consumer practices. Among them, we recorded a high level of distrust of banks and stores, representatives of these structures, as well as business structures, and revealed the installation of a savings form of economic behavior. The author concludes that it is important to study the role of trust in economic attitudes, because they are fundamental to the study of the economic behavior of each individual. The article is based on data obtained during the implementation of the project “Regional social capital in the context of crisis” in 2016.