Financial literacy and consumer culture in behavioral economics as a condition for sustainable development

Abstract

The purpose of the work is to study the possibilities of improving financial literacy and economic culture, behavioral economics in conjunction with solving the problems of sustainable development in the economic, environmental and social spheres. The apparatus of "behavioral economics" is applied as a theoretical paradigm that takes into account "psychology" to analyze the behavior of subjects of industrial relations. In the work, the author links financial literacy, behavioral economics, economic culture with the problems of sustainable development, and also reveals the conditionality of this development by the need to increase: the culture of thinking, comprehension of moral values, the level of rational consumption. According to the research hypothesis, the solution of these problems is largely due to the quality of the content of the education and enlightenment system. Financial literacy is considered as a condition for increasing the culture of consumption. The research methodology is based on a dialectical approach, an inductive-deductive method, a descriptive analysis of the fundamentals of the behavior of economic agents: theoretical principles of rational choice (maximizing utility) and observed deviations from rational behavior (limited rationality, behavioral effects and systematic errors associated with them); consumer culture, etc. Projects to improve financial literacy in the higher education system are considered as an educational environment that should be used to form predicative thinking, increase economic culture, culture of thinking, financial literacy, consumer culture, as important components in achieving sustainable development. The author concludes that increasing the financial literacy of the population contributes to an increase in the culture of consumption, which consists in satisfying the natural needs of a person as opposed to irrational behavior and degradation-parasitic consumption, which not only lead to losses in the personal budget, but also increase the destruction of natural resources and the destruction of the biosphere. As a result, it is proposed to supplement the program of improving economic culture conducted by national institutions with the topic of improving consumer culture, to expand the content of the general cultural competencies of the Federal State Educational Institution with a more complete knowledge of dialectics, moral value orientations, and the ability of predicative thinking