RESEARCH INTO ECONOMIC IDENTITY: AN ATTEMPT OF THE CONCEPTUALIZATION AND OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE CONSTRUCT

Abstract

The article presents the key provisions of the framework of the empirical research into the phenomenon of economic identity, which is to be implemented by the author in the process of studying youth economic identity and its regional features. The underlying idea of the proposed approach relates to the thesis that economic preferences have social and cultural meaning, thus social identity is an important factor of economic decision making, whose spheres are not limited to income and consumption. The author provides a rationale for the priority role of subject’s self-determination in relation to the external stimuli in the construction of economic identity. A value-semantic component of the economic self-determination shape subject’s economic attitudes both directly by limiting the choice of the acceptable kinds, forms and ways of economic activity and interaction, and indirectly by influencing the ambitions, expectations and aim of this activity. The indicators of the economic identity considered in the articled are the representations of the value regulators in the field of economics, attitudes to economic objects and phenomena, as well as attitudes to and readiness to observe norms and rules of economic interaction.