Approaches to justification of behavioral profiles of Russians based on assessing the level of financial literacy and use of digital fintech
Abstract The prolonged pandemic, which began to decline in early 2022, and the geopolitical situation that escalated at the same time, which led to unprecedented sanctions until then, had a significant impact on all spheres of life of Russians, primarily financial one. Forced restrictions due to the pandemic have led to an increase in the activity of remote use of digital financial services. The reduction of epidemiological danger and the gradual normalization of the situation were interrupted by restrictions on operations in the financial market, which, however, did not lead to a significant outflow of remote users of digital platforms to the offline format. The convenience and security of digital fintech as a system of tools for transactions and financial resource management have become apparent even to initially skeptical users. This means that following the expansion of the range of digital financial assets, products and services, it is possible to confidently predict the risks of irrational behavior of the population. Another consequence of this process will be the growing interest of scammers, who are traditionally well-versed in the current agenda and invent effective schemes of deception.
The information base of the study was made up of field surveys conducted by the authors as part of a research group under a grant from the Ministry of Finance of the Sverdlovsk Region to assess the level of financial literacy of the population, and the results of the authors` research on open data 2019-2023.
Keywords: financial services and technologies, fintech, financial behavior of the population, consumer behavior of the population, financial literacy.
Highlights:
♦ the main objective of this study is to identify behavioral changes that are associated with the activity (even if forced) of using digital financial services. The question is, what behavioral changes can this activity provoke and what financial decisions are influenced by behavioral changes;
♦ as a result of analyzing the array of information characterizing the sample of respondents, the authors managed to substantiate behavioral profiles, on the basis of which it is potentially possible to predict people`s behavior, their exposure to risks when using digital financial services, which may be especially in demand during periods of peak economic instability - consumer shocks, price spikes.
Elena A. Razumovskaya, Denis Yu. Razumovskiy - Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg, Russia