There are many factors having a significant impact on this cooperation - some of which can be described as behavioural. This means that the beneficiaries of the European Union (EU) programs financing cross-border cooperation use behavioral factors to make decisions about cooperation. Behavioural determinants of the decision-making process can be divided into internal and external factors, taking into account the criteria of the research subject. The internal factors are the stimuli affecting the economic reactions of a person (i.e. that are caused by human nature). The external stimulus is an independent factor that is impossible to influence. A factor’s genesis is another criterion, dividing them into psychological, demographical, social, cultural, religious, geographic and other factors.
The main goal of this paper is to show that behavioural factors have a significant influence on the level of utilization of European funds in the cross-border cooperation between Polish and German communes. The data used in this research comes from an original research project encompassing every commune in Brandenburg state and Lubuskie province. The author prepared and conducted a survey on the determinants of each commune's cooperation with a foreign partner. Results of this earlier project are the basis for the research question posited in this paper. The tools of descriptive statistics are used in this research.
Keywords: behaviour finance, cross-border cooperation, EU funds
JEL classification: D22, G02, F36