Images of trust and distrust in financial institutions in the language and speech culture of the population of the Russian province (case study of Lipetsk region)

Linchenko Andrei Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0001-6242-8844 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor, Scientific Researcher, Lipetsk Branch of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation; Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Lipetsk State Technical University 398002, Russia, Lipetsk region, Lipetsk, Tereshkova str., 17, sq. 104 linchenko1@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Vishnyakova Anastasiya Igorevna Researcher, Laboratory for the Study of Financial and Economic Behavior of Regional Population, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Lipetsk branch 398000, Russia, Lipetsk region, Lipetsk, Internatsionalnaya str., 12b, office 105 aalinchenko@fa.ru

Tabolina Valeriya Andreevna Researcher, Laboratory for the Study of Financial and Economic Behavior of Regional Population, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Lipetsk branch 398000, Russia, Lipetsk region, Lipetsk, Internatsionalnaya str., 12b, office 105 aalinchenko@fa.ru

The article was prepared based on the results of research carried out at the expense of budgetary funds under the state assignment to the Financial University, VTK-GZ-50-23

Trust in financial institutions is one of the most discussed issues among the participants of the financial market of modern Russia. The awareness of the huge potential for the formation of a culture of trust in financial institutions is also indicated by the new strategy adopted by the Government of the Russian Federation in October 2023 to increase financial literacy and form a financial culture until 2030, where "the formation of a trusting attitude of citizens to financial institutions" turns out to be one of the key tasks in the formation of a financial culture ^[1].

At the same time, anyone who turns to the study of institutional (and more broadly public) trust is forced to state that he is dealing with an extremely contradictory phenomenon of public life, when citizens' trust in certain institutions is influenced not only by current political or economic events, but also by value environments formed in other historical and cultural conditions. For example, according to the well—known sociologist P. Shtompka, collective memory plays an important role in the formation and reproduction of a culture of trust: "Cultural rules concerning trust are the complex intertwining historical results of collective experience. As evidence of the positive or negative experience of a given society in the past, they can significantly change the current calculations, as well as the individual inclinations of individuals" ^{[2, p.331]}. With regard to Russian specifics, this is usually associated with the preservation of the symbolic status of some cultural values of the USSR and the Soviet historical experience, which continues to influence the attitude of the population to the current socio-economic and political institutions ^{[3, 4]}. It would not be an exaggeration to also point out the dynamic nature of all types of trust (interpersonal, intergroup, institutional), depending on the specific social situation and personality characteristics of the principal. The above-mentioned actualizes the search for new methodological tools that can comprehensively reveal the features of the situation of trust. And here there are interesting prospects for studying the language and speech culture of the population of the Russian province, representing images of institutional trust in the context of regional socio-cultural characteristics and the habit of informants, which became the subject of the study, the results of which are presented in this article.    

         It would not be an exaggeration to note that the most common methods of studying public trust among Russian scientists are various types of questionnaires and surveys ^{[3, 5, 6, 7, 8]}. Taking into account the reliability of these methods and their results, it is possible to point out the methodological prospects for studying the language of the culture of trust and various trusting environments that are widely discussed in foreign science. In this regard, attention is drawn to studies of the representation of trust in official political institutions in language ^[9], the place and role of the language of trust in economic activity ^[10], the meaning of linguistic images of trust in the context of identity construction ^[11]. A group of works devoted to the analysis of the language of trust deserves special attention ^{[12, 13]}, as well as the consideration of trust and distrust as "language artifacts" ^[14]. Another area of research that has been actively developed in recent years has been the study of the "discursive landscape of trust" ^[15]. Common to the above-mentioned foreign studies is the appeal to the linguistic aspects of the reproduction of interpersonal, group and institutional trust.

         In the Russian research environment, we can also find a number of studies devoted to the linguistic aspects of the use of the concept of "trust" ^{[16, 17, 18]}.  Even more valuable for our work are the studies of the subjective perception of trust in interpersonal relationships ^{[19, 20]}, as well as the socio-philosophical understanding of the communicative functions of the language of trust ^[21]. In particular, the communicative triad proposed by S.A. Danilov attracts attention: "language is the house of being", "language is the basis of communication", "language is the house of trust" ^{[21, pp.216-217]}. The last element of this triad, in our opinion, indicates the dual function of language for the culture of trust. On the one hand, language represents existing images of trust in the semantic space of culture. On the other hand, language and speech culture themselves influence the formation of new images of trust and distrust that arise within discursive practices. In our article, we will focus on both of these aspects, which requires us to address the generational features of the representation of images of trust and distrust of financial institutions, as well as the specifics of these images in the context of the type of settlement of our informants.

Concepts of "culture of trust", "speech culture", "language of trust"

In the broadest sense, trust can be defined as "confidence in the ability to fulfill obligations" ^{[22, p.43]}. Russian sociologist F.N. Ilyasov believes that "trust is a set of perceptions and moods of the subject: 1) reflecting his expectations that the object will implement some functions that contribute to increasing or preserving the resources of the subject; 2) manifested in the willingness of the subject to delegate the implementation of these functions to the object. Accordingly, distrust is the expectation of performing functions that lead to a decrease in the resources of the subject, leading to a refusal to delegate the performance of the corresponding functions to the object" ^{[23, p.25]}. As noted in the study by O.I. Lavrushin, "trust, having a categorical status from an economic point of view, characterizes such relations, which, expressing mutual obligations between subjects, are based on the coincidence and realization of their interests. Trust exists only where there is a common sign of their essence, where both the interests of the principal (seller, lender, etc.) and the trustee (buyer, borrower) are realized" ^[24]. The study emphasizes that trust is not so much a "state of consciousness" as a real relationship between the subjects of a two–way trust process.

Since in the future, within the framework of this study, we will be interested only in institutional trust, we will allow ourselves to bypass the issues of the general structure of trust and focus on the concept of "trust culture". The concept of "culture of trust" has long been firmly established in scientific circulation, although in some cases it is replaced by the concept of "trust environment", which emphasizes the dynamic nature and specific tools for the formation of a culture of trust (including information openness) ^[25]. Researchers also talk about the culture of trust in the plural, pointing to the diversity of sources of formation ^[26] and the multilevel nature of this phenomenon ^[27]. In our opinion, it makes sense to use both concepts when talking about trusting environments as a prerequisite for the formation of a culture of trust.

From our point of view, the culture of trust is a set of value-normative attitudes and orientations of a social group or community, reflecting expectations and belief in the ability to fulfill mutual obligations and social functions. Accordingly, depending on the number of social groups and communities, as well as the relations between them, we can talk about the dynamic interaction of trust cultures involving political, economic, social, religious and other dimensions. At the same time, studying the dynamics of trust cultures and its transformation in the long term is not possible without a traditional analysis of the structure of interaction and circulation of forms of social capital. This is due to the fact that in modern sociological practice, the methodological approach of R. Putnam, representing trust as the most important component of social capital, a kind of "connection" that ensures the cooperation of social agents ^[28].

One of the most relevant theories of the circulation of capital of various types and their influence on the system of dispositions in society remains the theory of P. Bourdieu, actualizing the praxiological aspect of the study of the circulation of capital in society. According to the French scientist, social reality is structured both by objective social structures (including institutions) and by the habitus of social agents who change the social world within the framework of their dispositions (predispositions). For a foreign thinker, the structure of distribution and circulation of capital (cultural, social, economic) in society depends on the peculiarities of competition between social agents and the dominance of one over the other. The result of this competition is the formation of many fields (subspaces and areas of social reality), the structure of which is a state of correlation of forces between agents and institutions involved in the struggle for the distribution of the corresponding capital accumulated in the past ^[29]. In our case, P. Bourdieu's thesis is fundamentally important that competition between agents is always associated with the peculiarities of their habitus, that is, practical patterns of behavior and the corresponding level of trust.

One of the environments in which social reality is structured by the habitus of social agents is the language environment, where language not only reflects objective social structures, but also constructs the social world. And here the culture of trust is in a certain sense "immersed" in the space of the speech culture of the subject of trust.

In Russian linguistics, it is customary to correlate the term "speech culture" with the concepts of "speech culture" and "language culture". The widest logical scope is observed in the concept of "language culture", by which Russian researchers understand the phenomenon "denoting a wide range of phenomena related to both the language system and its functioning in speech, as well as to socioculturally motivated characteristics of speech behavior" ^{[30, p.89]}. In contrast, the culture of speech is understood as "possession of the norms of the literary language in its oral and written form, in which the choice and organization of language means is carried out, allowing in a certain situation of communication and compliance with the ethics of communication to ensure the greatest effect in achieving the goals" ^{[31, p.178]}. In the same dictionary edited by Yu .N. Karaulova interprets speech culture as "an integral part of the culture of the people associated with the use of language" ^{[31, pp.413-414]}. In the future, this concept, which belongs to the pen of O.B. Sirotinina, received clarification: "the concept of speech culture is broader than the concept of speech culture, which includes only the nature of language use, but not the language itself and the picture of the world fixed in it" ^{[32, p.343]}.

The connecting link between the culture of trust and speech culture is the concept of "the language of trust". In a narrow sense, this "concept refers to linguistic means – verbal and nonverbal – that purposefully convey trust and create a basis for continuing or improving relationships" ^{[13, p.91]}. In the same study, based on the historical and cultural analysis of the language of trust of merchants and city authorities in Europe in pre-modern societies, it is emphasized that this concept allows you to see how trust is used in specific situations. The broader meaning of the concept of "the language of trust" is found in the work of the Russian researcher S.A. Danilov, who understands by this term "not a specific language form, language or communication technology, but the context formed by socio-cultural factors. Unity of values, cultural attitudes, similarity of languages determines mutual understanding between communication partners" ^{[21, p.217]}. This definition is more suitable for the purposes of our work, where the language of trust of the population represents the features of trust, the status of its values expressed in speech culture and also indicates the historical and cultural reasons and sources of dominance of the corresponding forms of trust or distrust of financial institutions.

Following foreign authors, we would also like to point out the discursive nature of the language of trust, which allows us to emphasize the dynamic nature of the language of trust and its deep relationship with practice ^{[15, p.9]}. From this point of view, trust turns out to be both a social construct and a process that depends on specific spheres of life and types of activity.

Research methodology

         The post-metaphysical understanding of the social actualized the idea of practices as the environment in which social interaction and the construction of social order take place. Moreover, modern researchers have long been talking about the "practical turn" as the most promising horizon for social relations research ^[33]. According to P. Bourdieu, practice can be defined as any action of an agent in the social world, as well as what this agent literally "meets" with. However, it is habitus that is a necessary condition for the very possibility of practices, since it acts as a scheme for their production and reproduction. In other words, "habitus is a structured system of practical schemes predisposed to function as a structure that forms all the practices of the agent in such a way that they are adapted to the system of social relations, the product of which he is" ^{[29, pp.558-559]}. For us, this means that trust is not so much a "reflection" of a certain situation in the financial services market, as an internal component of the agent's set of practices, when the most important characteristic is not so much financial knowledge as involvement and the degree of immersion in the current situation in the financial market.

The appeal to the representation of images of trust and distrust in the speech culture of the population of the Russian province actualized the use of the potential of qualitative methods of sociology. Considering the dynamic and discursive nature of the culture of trust and its language, as well as the connection of the latter with practices, in our opinion, the most productive method of studying images of trust is interviewing.

         In the autumn of 2022, we conducted a sociological study, during which 55 people living in urban (26 interviews) and rural (29 interviews) settlements of the Lipetsk region were interviewed. Among the city informants, 10 men and 16 women took part in the interview. Rural informants were represented by 16 men and 13 women. In our study, we focused on three generations: the older generation (19 interviews), the millennial generation (22 interviews) and the centennial generation (14 interviews). The age boundaries between generations took into account the peculiarities of the Russian specifics analyzed in V.V. Radaev's monograph ^[34]. In the course of the study, we used the method of semi-structured interviews, when informants were asked several specific questions about their understanding of financial institutions, the peculiarities of trust in these institutions, positive and negative experiences of interaction with various financial institutions in Russia, self-assessment of the level of financial literacy. The remaining questions were not planned in advance and were formulated during the interview in order to clarify certain statements made in the informants' interviews.

         Subsequently, the collected interviews were transcribed, which made it possible to use their material to analyze the partial characteristics of the texts by means of frequency analysis of the interview texts. The purpose of our frequency content analysis of the collected interviews was to study the features of the content and structure of the informants' text. The authors of the study attempted to reduce the received word forms to lexemes, which made it possible to carry out a comparative analysis in the context of generational, gender characteristics, as well as in the context of the type of settlement of informants.

Results of frequency content analysis of interviews

The first step in analyzing the results was to determine the main characteristics of the interview texts, which traditionally include water content (the proportion of text that has no informational value) and academic nausea of the text (the density of the use of individual words and statements). The results of the analysis of the characteristics of the texts are given in Table 1 (see Table 1).

Table 1. Characteristics of interview texts*

* Compiled by the authors

As can be seen from Table 1, the data obtained on the water content of the text clearly go beyond the norm (the norm is from 60 to 75%). This indicates the high emotionality of the interview texts. It is important to note that this trend can be traced across all three generational groups, and also turned out to be close in importance for men and women, both living in urban and rural settlements. In our opinion, the main reason for the high level of emotionality of the texts of all groups of interviews is the topic of finance itself, which can undoubtedly be considered one of the dominant topics of everyday discourse (e.g. family budget).

The next step was the analysis of texts, the purpose of which was to assign fragments of interview texts to key thematic groups. It should be noted that Russian researchers understand the thematic group as "a set of a large number of words, stable word combinations and phraseological units, units of different parts of speech belonging to the same sphere of reality" ^{[35, p. 195]}. In total, we identified six thematic groups of vocabulary: financial organizations, money, changes, fraud, country, financial literacy. More detailed information about each thematic group is presented in table 2.  

Table 2. Basic concepts of thematic groups,

collected in an interview *

* Compiled by the authors

Despite the fact that the selected thematic groups do not reflect age and gender specifics, and also do not take into account the place of residence of the informant, they allow us to get a general idea of the key elements of the linguistic representation of trust among respondents in the region. They also allow a deeper understanding of the images of trust/ distrust in financial institutions that dominate the economic consciousness of informants, and also indirectly reflect the peculiarities of their financial behavior.

A careful look at the thematic groups shows that our study confirms the conclusions drawn on the basis of NAFI studies in the Lipetsk region in the period 2018 – 2020 ^[36]. They point primarily to the dominance of the conservative model of financial behavior and the average level of financial knowledge. Recent studies of the level of socio-economic well-being of the Central Federal District regions indicate significant problems in the Lipetsk Region in comparison with other regions ^[37].

The thematic groups presented in Table 2 not only indicate a conservative model, but also allow us to see a high level of resentment associated with the experiences of the events of thirty years ago – the collapse of the USSR and the difficult economic situation of the 1990s. It is significant that the banking sector continues to play the main role for respondents, which in their minds is represented by two or three key players - Sberbank, Alfa–Bank, VTB. The second thematic group, as we expected, turned out to be connected with the concept of "money". It is noteworthy that in this group of words we also encountered a rather conservative perception of the sphere of money, which was reflected in the most popular concepts: credit, salary, microloan, savings. At the same time, this group includes several frequently encountered concepts that clearly indicate a low level of assessment of one's own financial situation (a microloan, lack of money, lack of money, a financial cushion). No less pessimistic were the concepts of the third thematic group related to the interpretation of social changes. In this case, attention is drawn to the fact that the most popular concepts in the minds of informants either contain a clearly negative assessment of changes (crisis, problem, hard life, decline), or refer to the most obvious reasons for social changes for respondents (privatization, reforms). It was quite expected among the thematic groups devoted to the financial sphere to see a group of concepts related to the topic of fraud. It was revealed that the collective memory of the major scams of the 1990s still continues to be relevant, as indicated by the high intensity of the use of the concepts of "financial pyramid" and "MMM". At the same time, in the interview texts, we did not identify concepts dedicated to the actual aspects of fraud using digital technologies, which indicates the unwillingness of informants to discuss and deeply understand this topic. Given that trust in the state continues to be one of the key markers of generalized trust in Russia, which has been repeatedly emphasized in studies ^[4], it seems quite logical that there is a group of concepts about the state among the identified thematic groups. It is very indicative of the fact that the third line after the abstract concepts of "state" and "country" is occupied by the concept of "taxes", indicating the dominance in the minds of informants of the image of the state as a "collector of payments", and to a much lesser extent as an "assistant" supporting a person in everyday life. In this thematic group, we also recorded a high intensity of use of concepts related to the memory of the collapse of the USSR and the era of Perestroika.  In our opinion, the high intensity of the use of these concepts indicates not only nostalgia for the USSR, but also makes the images of the Soviet one of the sources of public trust / distrust in relation to current socio-economic processes and financial institutions. The sixth thematic group in the collected interviews turned out to be related to financial literacy issues, around which active work has been carried out in the Lipetsk region for several years ^[6]. However, even here the key concepts turned out to be more associated with a conservative model of financial behavior, more focused on relations with banks and insurance companies, as repeatedly noted by researchers of trust in financial institutions in Russia ^{[5, 7, 24]}. Figure 1 shows a word cloud (formed using an online resource: https://www.îáëàêîñëîâ .Russian Federation), most often found in interviews with our informants (Fig. 1).

 Fig. 1. Word cloud based on the results of frequency content analysis

interview texts

However, the presented word cloud and the selected thematic groups, as we have already noted above, do not reflect the gender and age specifics of the frequency of use of words, and also do not take into account the place of residence of the informant. Moreover, in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the representation of images of trust/distrust in financial institutions, we not only analyzed nouns, but also addressed the peculiarities of the use of adjectives and verbs in the interview texts. As part of the objectives of our research, we will focus on the study of generational features and the dependence of trust images in the language on the place of residence of informants (rural and urban settlements).

The specificity of images of trust and distrust of financial institutions in the context of generational characteristics and the type of settlement of informants

Taking into account the peculiarities of the allocation of generational groups in the conditions of Russian specifics ^[34], in our study we rejected a deeper differentiation of older generations and considered them as a single age cohort. This is explained by the experience of domestic research ^{[5, 6, 8]}, the results of which indicate a clear lag of all age cohorts of the older generation (after 45 years) in matters of financial literacy and the use of modern digital technologies in the field of finance.

 A comparative analysis of the key lexemes used in interviews of rural and urban centenials showed differences in the understanding of the financial sphere by representatives of this age group. On the one hand, both rural and urban centenials demonstrated a pronounced conservative model of financial behavior in their vocabulary, primarily linking the financial sector with banks, salaries and practices of interaction with the most recognizable brands of the banking sector (Sberbank, Alfa-Bank, VTB). On the other hand, the study revealed a significant difference between rural centenials, who much more often than their urban peers used nouns related to the topics of microloans, loans, crisis, lack of money and poverty.

The appeal to the millennial generation revealed a similar picture. On the one hand, the set of lexemes used by urban millennials in the Lipetsk region reflects the greater stability of their financial situation, where among the most popular nouns we find lexemes: experience, salary, enterprise, credit, state, financial cushion. Rural millennials demonstrate the dominance of a distinctly negative interpretation of personal and collective experience in their linguistic image of the financial sphere. Their vocabulary is dominated by nouns: microfinance organization, privatization, fraud, pyramid scheme, MMM. On the other hand, both urban and rural millennials are no less conservative in their model of financial behavior. They are still exclusively focused on banks and insurance organizations, and also consider wages as the only source of income.      

Table 3. Frequency of use of nouns in interview texts (generational aspect of residents of urban settlements)*

* Compiled by the authors

It was quite expected to see a similar trend in the texts of interviews of the older age group. The stability of the financial situation of citizens aged 46-70 years in this case was reflected in the tokens associated with the state, the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, wages, insurance and insurance companies, and was also expressed in the high frequency of the use of the lexeme "experience". The most frequently used lexemes in the older age group in rural settlements of the region turned out to be quite different. In addition to the expected and most frequent lexemes associated with Sberbank, the banking sector and the Pension Fund, we identified a significant number of nouns that indicated the difficult financial situation of our informants: hard life, lack of money, banditry, microfinance organization (Table 3 and Table 4).

Table 4. Frequency of use of nouns in interview texts (generational aspect of residents

rural settlements)*

* Compiled by the authors

A look at the generational specifics of reproducing and constructing images of trust and distrust of financial institutions in the context of the frequency of using adjectives in interviews showed that both urban and rural centenials are less willing to use this part of speech to characterize financial institutions and relationships with them. On the contrary, the speech of representatives of the older generation turned out to be the most saturated with adjectives, where the use of adjectives was three times more frequent among centenials and twice as frequent among millennials. The analysis of the frequency of the use of adjectives showed that the differences between generations were less significant in comparison with the difference that was demonstrated by representatives of rural and urban settlements. In interviews of all three generations of residents of rural settlements, the adjectives "heavy", "state", "unreliable", "empty", "difficult" dominated, while representatives of urban settlements mostly used a number of adjectives: "state", "non-state", "commercial", "private", "balanced", "reliable".

Our thesis about the absence of noticeable differences between generations in a region with an average level of financial culture and significant differences between representatives of rural and urban settlements has again proved relevant in terms of the use of verbs in interviews. If we found a high frequency of verbs among residents of rural settlements indicating distrust of financial institutions (to cheat, not to pay, to suffer, to disappear), then representatives of urban settlements demonstrated a more positive view of their experience of interaction with the financial sphere. Moreover, if a number of the most frequently used verbs were identified among urban millennials, indicating the attractiveness of investment activity (trust, postpone, invest, provide, earn), then the interview of urban millennials did not demonstrate multidirectional speech activity. The use of verbs in interviews with representatives of the older generation was expected to be conservative, where the greatest frequency was associated with the verbs: trust, dispose, manage, buy, pay.      

No less interesting is the fact that it was the environment of the inhabitants of rural settlements that turned out to be the most saturated with images of collective memory about the collapse of the USSR and privatization. It is significant that among the townspeople we are faced with references to the collapse of the USSR only among centenials. This can be explained by the actualization in the educational environment of discussions around the reassessment of the events of the collapse of the USSR in recent times, when the events of 1991 are increasingly being officially called "the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the XX century", emphasizing the exclusively traumatic nature of this event. Unlike the townspeople, residents of rural settlements in all three generations demonstrated the presence of this topic in interviews. It is noteworthy that the lexeme "collapse of the USSR" was among the fifteen most used nouns in all three generational groups, where its most intensive use was associated with millennials and the older generation, who witnessed the events of the collapse of the USSR and their impact on the subsequent socio-economic difficulties of life in the Russian countryside.

A look from the side of gender differences also revealed a significant difference between the inhabitants of rural and urban settlements. As in previous cases, in interviews collected in rural settlements, we were faced with an unambiguously negative experience of relationships with the financial sphere, expressed by both men and women with the help of tokens: hard life, lack of money, inflation, crisis, microloans, banditry. As expected, the dominance of banks, insurance and microfinance organizations was revealed in the interview texts. In this case, gender differences also turned out to be insignificant. Weak differences were also revealed by us when referring to the texts of interviews of men and women of urban settlements. Both groups showed intensive use of such lexemes as state, experience, salary, organization, economy, country. The texts of interviews with women revealed the presence of tokens related to pension payments.    

Thus, the results of the frequency content analysis of the interview texts allow not only to identify key trends in the area of trust of the population of the region to financial institutions in the Lipetsk region, but also to fix the peculiarities of the use of vocabulary in the context of generational, gender differences, as well as depending on the type of settlement. The analysis of the interview texts revealed a high level of emotionality when describing the experience of relationships with the financial sphere, which turned out to be characteristic of both rural and urban residents in all generational groups. The images of the financial sphere, represented in the interview language, revealed the dominance of a conservative model of financial behavior, as well as a high level of resentment associated with the experiences of events thirty years ago (the collapse of the USSR, privatization). This model continues to be reproduced in the speech culture of our informants, as shown by the analysis of interviews of all three generations of residents of the region. The fact of reproduction of a conservative model of behavior, in turn, suggests a tendency to construct images of distrust of financial institutions and modern financial market practices in the speech culture of the population of the Russian province. A low level of assessment of their own financial situation was also revealed (microloan, lack of money, lack of money, financial cushion). This trend turned out to be characteristic exclusively for all generations of informants in rural settlements. The representation of the experience of social change among rural and urban informants turned out to be quite pessimistic, when the most popular lexemes either contained a clearly negative assessment of changes (crisis, problem, hard life, decline), or referred to the most obvious reasons for social change for respondents (privatization, reforms of the 1990s). The study confirmed the conclusions about the preservation of the collective memory of privatization and financial pyramids of the 1990s in the minds of residents of Russian regions. At the same time, in the interview texts, we did not identify concepts dedicated to the actual aspects of fraud using digital technologies. The frequency content analysis of the lexemes used by informants in interviews also revealed the dominance in the minds of informants of the image of the state as a "collector of payments", and to a lesser extent, an "assistant" supporting a person in everyday relationships with financial institutions. The study showed that in regions with an average standard of living and an average level of development of financial culture, the dominance of conservative models of financial behavior, the difference between generations is less noticeable against the background of a significant difference between residents of rural and urban settlements.