Details

The purpose is to develop a methodology for assessing the creditworthiness of individual borrowers that accounts for the socio-psychological characteristics of their regional environment. The following goals were set and achieved: 1. To review theoretical and empirical approaches to creditworthiness assessment and behavioural determinants of loan delinquency; 2. To identify and justify a set of regional socio-psychological indicators for credit risk assessment; 3. To evaluate the effect of socio-psychological indicators on overdue debt; 4. To construct a composite regional socio-psychological risk index; 5. To develop a psychosocial borrower assessment questionnaire with embedded response validity controls; 6. To validate the proposed methodology. The relevance of the study stems from the limitations of conventional credit scoring models, which rely exclusively on financial indicators and disregard the behavioural and psychological context in which borrowers make financial decisions. Calculations were performed using Stata and Microsoft Excel. The main result and novelty of the study is a two-tier assessment framework comprising the Regional Socio-Psychological Risk Index (RSPRI), weighted based on empirically derived regression coefficients, and a 40-item psychosocial borrower assessment questionnaire with embedded validity control measures.