Vladimir Yu. Litvinov

Relevance. The article discusses the actualization of the concept of “regional identity” for psychological science. In many ways, for the first time there is a comparison of the categorical structure of ideas about the country and about its own region.

Objective. Comparison of the image of Russia and the images of their own regions among young people living in various regions of the country.

Methods. Semantic scaling technique with further factorization of the obtained data. The study involved 318 respondents from 8 different macro-regions of the country.

Results. A 6-factor structure of representations of the image of Russia and the image of its own region was obtained. These structures have their own significant differences, both in the structure of factors itself, and in the degree of importance of the hierarchy of factors. The regional identity of youth, to a certain extent, determines the modality of the adoption of civic identity.

Conclusions. According to the results of the study, it can be argued that for those young people who developed a positive image of their own region, a positive image of the country as a whole was formed.

Acknowledgments. The reported study was funded by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project number 19-313-90069.

Special gratitude for help in organizing data collection Anastasia Zvezdina, head of the department of the Center for Youth Projects, ANO DPO “Corporate University of Russian Railways”.