Cognitive Model of Economic Diversification in Kuzbass During Controlled Compression Galina E. Mekush Kemerovo State University, Russia, Kemerovo eLibrary Author SPIN: 9687-7770 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8102-392X [email protected]

The article illustrates the method of cognitive modeling applied to the case of the Kemerovo Region, Russia. The authors developed various scenarios for the local economy in the context of a controlled compression of the socio- economic environment. The Kemerovo Region, or Kuzbass, is a mining region, and the current economic sanctions affect its monopoly dependence in the coal industry. Although cognitive modeling is often applied to the development of resource-dependent regions, the novelty of this study lies in the choice of factors. The target factors involved economic growth, incomes of new industries, and a new, non-coal economy. The factors depended on the type of socio-economic compression, i.e., economic, demographic, physical, communicative, etc. The cognitive model was represented as an oriented graph with 23 vertices and 130 arcs. The graph made it possible to compile an adjacency matrix with the intensity coefficients determined by expert analysis. The matrix revealed a mutual influence on the factors. All factors in the cognitive model for local economic system were combined into the following aggregated groups: socio-economic compression; industry complexes; investments; market, government, plan; target factors. The modelling yielded an inertial and a target scenario. The impulse effect on the compression factors made it possible to predict the development in line with these two scenarios. The growth of the non-coal economy and related investments led to an increase in target factors.