The article reveals the main approaches to understanding the essence of ecological culture, as well as its basic components: cognitive, value and activity. The article focuses on the fact that pro-ecological behaviorur is a leading indicator of ecological culture. It is noted that a society can have a sufficiently high level of environmental knowledge and correct values, but in the absence of pro-environmental behaviorur, we cannot speak about the proper level of environmental culture. Attention is focused on the difficulties of empirical study of the real state of the components of ecological culture. The definition of the term "digital footprint" is given. The possibility and expediency of studying the ecological attitudes of the population as the most mobile element of ecological culture using the analysis of statistics of search queries is shown. The purpose of the study is to identify the ecological attitudes of the inhabitants of the Sverdlovsk region and approbation of the methodology for analyzing statistics of search queries of the population on environmental topics, recorded by the Yandex search engine. The study was carried out within the framework of a quantitative approach. To collect empirical information, a continuous collection of search queries from the population of the Sverdlovsk region was carried out from 2010 to 2019 inclusive. The technique of collection, processing and analysis of search queries of the population is described. The analysis made it possible to identify a number of significant pro-ecological attitudes of the population, for example, for a significant part of the population of the Sverdlovsk region it is important to know and apply technologies for waste disposal, to know the state of air and water in the place of residence, as well as technologies for checking and cleaning them. It was found that children and adolescents are more interested in information about various kinds of environmental pollution, and young people and people of the middle age group are more interested in means and technologies for waste disposal and cleaning of natural resources. In general, the results of the study showed that search query data can serve as a source of up-to-date information on the ecological attitudes of the region's population. The advantages and disadvantages of the analysis of search queries as an empirical research method are shown.

ecological culture, activity component, ecological attitudes, pro-ecological action, digital footprint, search engine, Yandex

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