损失厌恶与商业健康保险研究

A Study on Loss Aversion and Commercial Health Insurance

本文研究了损失厌恶是否影响我国商业健康保险的参保率。首先,依据前景理论推导出损失厌恶扭曲保险购买决策的命题;其次,使用中国家庭金融调查(2017)的微观数据,运用Probit模型进行实证检验,得出与预测一致的结论。若参考点位于无保险保障框架下,损失厌恶与购买商业健康险的可能性之间呈现显著负相关关系,损失厌恶程度每增加1单位,决策者购买保险的可能性下降6.5%。无论使用替换模型、缩小样本范围、或是改变核心解释变量的度量方法,该结论都具有稳健性。进一步分析参考点位于有保险保障框架下的情形,发现损失厌恶与社会医疗保险的投保行为呈正相关,说明损失厌恶与保险需求的关系严重依赖于参考点的选择。基于以上结论,提出了抑制损失厌恶消极作用的有关建议。

This paper investigated whether loss aversion affected the participation rate of commercial health insurance in China.Based on the prospect theory, we first deduced the proposition that loss aversion distorted the purchase of insurance.Secondly, we used the data from China Household Finance Survey(2017) to empirically test it with the Probit model, and found thatthe empirical evidence was consistent with the proposition.At the uninsured reference point, there was a significant negative correlation between loss aversion and the possibility of purchasing commercial health insurance.The likelihood decreased by 6.5% with one unit increased in loss aversion.This conclusion was robust whether using alternative models, narrowing the sample range, or changing the measures of core explanatory variables.Then we further analyzed the situation of the reference point with full insurance and found that loss aversion was positively correlated with the social medical insurance.It indicated that the relationship between loss aversion and insurance demand depended heavily on the location of reference point.According to the above conclusions, this paper put forward some suggestions to restrain the negative effects of loss aversion.