Consumer Behavior Tendencies of Public Employees in the Context of Behavioral Economics

Science of economics is one of the oldest disciplines within the historical process. It handles the individuals as rational entities which aim at maximizing their welfare by using scarce resources as efficiently as possible. Having been brought into literature as a sub-branch of economics which has been recently developed, behavioral economics has brought a new dimension to the concept of rationalist individual through the assumption that individuals display irrational behaviors in the economy. It supports the idea that individuals do not necessarily display rational behaviors in their economic transactions but make various decisions through the effect of their emotions. This study aims at explaining economic behaviors of the public officers by analyzing them within the framework of behavioral economics. The study covers the public employees in the Central District of Tokat. The data of the study were obtained from 409 randomly selected participants in the face-to-face interview. Percent and chi-square analysis was used. It has also been determined that males behave much more depending on market norms and older individuals have a higher level of self-control while younger individuals prefer taking much more risks than the elder ones