At the present stage of society, the purpose of the socio-economic policy includes management of not only economy and social sphere, but also the behavior of many people. It is the complex approach to the development of territorial strategies that ensures the achievement of target benchmarks; and consideration of behavioral factors and public opinion when making and effectively implementing management decisions helps improve the population’s quality of life. Socio-economic transformational changes of the past 20 years in Russia are reflected in the social structure of the society, lead to the emergence of new socialization mechanisms, which raises research interest in studying the peculiarities of socio-demographic groups, an important part of which is the youth as a carrier of creative potential of the country’s development. Particularly popular amid the differentiated development of Russian regions is the study of young people in the regional breakdown taking into account regional peculiarities. The purpose of the paper is to study one of the aspects of socio-cultural image of the youth – leisure preferences. A leisure pattern is one of the lifestyle indicators defining its intensity, consistency and “soundness”. The informational base is the survey on socio-cultural development of the Vologda Oblast conducted by the Institute for Socio-Economic Development of Territories of RAS in 2015. The analysis has helped identify the priorities of spending spare time among young people in the Vologda Oblast and define their qualitative difference between the preferences of people of middle and retirement age. Despite the fact that most of the time young people spend socializing with their friends and on the Internet, they spend their time free from professional and educational commitments visiting public places, playing sports or doing hobbies. The most popular are cinemas and events which do not require financial investment by the visitors
Keywords
young people, sociological survey, leisure preferences, spare time, visiting public places, cultural activity