Attitude to public goods and social activity of urban and rural population

The paper presents the results of two sociological studies on local governance and the quality of life in metropolitan and rural settlements. The authors perform a comparative analysis of the parts of the questionnaire on respondents’ attitudes towards public good activities. There were significant differences in the opinion of respondents in the polls in 2014 and 2018. Most respondents (66%) expressed a voluntary desire to propose and implement a project for the public good in a 2014 survey. A 2018 poll showed that the number of respondents who wanted to do this decreased to 27%. The authors associate these changes with the social status and field of activity of the respondents, the conditions for conducting surveys, the deteriorating financial situation and well-being of the respondents and their families. It has become possible to systematize the scope of projects focused on public goods and identify the constraints on the active involvement of respondents and local residents in project implementation while providing a content analysis of the 2014 survey explanations made by respondents. The sociological definition of public goods and M. Olson’s theory of collective inaction, the concept of elite capture of resources and the concept of privatism are the theoretical basis for the conclusions made by the authors about the lack of interest of the locals in the projects under consideration. The authors conclude that the attitude of the majority of respondents and local residents to public good activities has become rational. The reluctance to be engaged in it is caused by a lack of support and solidarity of the local community and a lack of common interests among neighbors. In this case, the idea of what is a public good and the desire to contribute to its multiplication become diluted. People demonstrate the dominant desire to augment private and, to a lesser extent, club goods that implies the improvement to the local space of the respondents’ residence.