The Attitude of Internet Users to the Economy in a Pandemic: a Cross-Cultural Analysis

Abstract

Objective. Analysis of the psychological characteristics of the attitude of Russians to economic phenomena in the context of the coronavirus pandemic with an examination of its cross-cultural characteristics in comparison with countries that have a different from Russian ethnocultural history of the formation and development of economies (United States and Japan). Background. Russia is a leader in the international ranking of countries with the richest natural resources, but the standard of living of Russians for many years remains insufficiently high, and ac¬cording to the estimates of Russians themselves, negative dynamics of life is manifested in a noticeable number of socio-economic indicators. At the same time, scientific data obtained in recent years indicate the presence of direct relationships between economic and psychological factors of the development of society, the nature of which has not yet been fully disclosed. The research is exploratory in nature. Methodology. The concept of psychological relations, structural and content analysis of search queries, methods of continuous sampling and comparative analysis, method of grounded theory, expert assessment, predictive methods. Conclusions. User interest in the pandemic has varied according to the course of the pandemic in each of the three countries. At the same time, in the United States and Japan, interest in economic realities significantly exceeded interest in a pandemic, and in Russia, interest in a pandemic turned out to be incomparably higher. The initially high interest of the population in the pandemic began to decline sharply over time, but the popularity of economically oriented inquiries remains at a high level: a decrease in interest in theoretical problems and its strengthening in real economic situations have been revealed. The nature of thematic requests from users from the United States, Japan and Russia allows us to state that in the first two countries, inquiries on business problems have sharply increased, which is not typical of Russians, whose income is mainly determined by the state. At the same time, the benefits of an operational nature, presumably, can become concomitant causes of a possible strategic crisis both in the objective — economic and subjective — psychological terms.