Debtors Attitude towards Credits
This article describes motivational, cognitive and behavioral components of the attitude towards credit. «Attitude towards credit» questionnaire is used consisting of ten scales divided into three major components. (1) Affective-motivational component: (a) getting pleasure from credit usage, (b) turning dream into reality, (c) vigilant attitude towards credit, (d) acceptance of credit as a norm of life, (e) credit usage oriented towards major expenditures; (2) cognitive component: (f) awareness of credit terms; (3) behavioral component – coping with over-indebtedness: (g) search of effective problem solutions, (h) avoiding behavior, (i) socio-economic activity, (j) purposeful search for help in the social network. The sample includes people, who have taken credit in a bank and have overdue payments of three months or more. The results based on this sample suggest that motivational and behavioral components of attitude towards credit may empirically contradict each other. Also, relation between components of attitude towards credit and socio-demographic parameters of debtors has been determined. In particular, the results provide evidence of differential power of material status, education and employment status in terms of how respondents cope with indebtedness. Using cluster analysis, four types of credit debtors are offered: (1) rational debtors, (2) hostages of external life circumstances, (3) low-resource vigilant debtors, (4) low-resource hedonist debtors. These types differ significantly in motivation of credit taking, awareness of credit terms, ways of coping with over-indebtedness, as well as in levels of education and material status. The rational debtors are discussed as the least problematic group, and the low-resource hedonist debtors are discussed as the most problematic group.