Credit culture of students as the object of sociological analysis

Growth ofvolume in crediting to individuals in the Russian Federation during 2008-2018 and problems of debt maintenance have actualized the need of studying changes in the sphere of Russian crediting culture. The aim of the paper is to study credit attitude of modern student youth. At the first stage of the study the authors analyzed the correlation between keyoptions: “credit culture”, “credit attitude”, “credit behavior”, “financial culture”, “financial attitude”, “financial behavior”. The investigators carried out the review of foreign and Russian research works aimed at studying the credit culture and credit behavior of students. They revealed features of foreign studies of credit culture / behavior, on this basis they conclude that this subject is poorly developed in Russia not only by individual socio-demographic groups, but also by the population generally. The working hypothesis of the research has been put forward: it is the change in the credit attitude of young people who do not have their own credit experience, which is the evidence of serious changes in the credit culture. At the second stage, the pilot study “Credit behavior of the population” (December 2017 - January 2018, Volgograd, accidental sampling ( n = 404), the sample representation task was not set, the method of collecting information: on-line questioning) has been implemented. The results of the study let the authors to describe the credit culture of Volgograd Universities’ students. The strong savings orientation among students has been defined. They are prone to saving money in a difficult situation and are ready to provide financial assistance, but theywould not like to resort to it themselves in case of difficulties. Students realize the need of improving their level of financial literacy for building their own effective financial strategies. In the minds of students there is a necessity to correlate risk and result, but not all of them are ready to risk. Analysis of differences in the responses of full-time and extra-mural students has confirmed the working hypothesis. Credit attitude of students, in our point of view, testify the rootedness of the youth credit culture. The correlation between the results of estimating the impact of credit practice on credit culture and the modern scale of crediting to Russians makes it possible to hypothesize that there will be a strong transformation of the credit culture of Russians in the next 20 years. The authors plan to test this hypothesis in their further studies.