Environmental Pollution,risk Perception And Residents’ Consumption Of Commercial Health Insurance

With the continuous development of various industries in China,though residents’income level has been on a rise and the economy has been growing at a gratifying rate,the environmental pollution in this country has become increasingly serious.Pollution has been worsing people’s living environment and causing harm to human health.This phenomenon has increased the residents’natural demand for health,and correspondingly increased the health costs of residents.Since the PM_2.5 index was announced,air pollution has aroused widespread concern throughout the society.At the same time,the improvement of education level and the publicity of the government and insurance companies have increased residents’awareness of risk and health protection.Residents have begun to consciously participate in environmental protection actions and taken measures to manage risks.China’s current social medical insurance system can only guarantee basic medical services,but cannot meet the different medical requirements of different income groups.Under such circumstance,the rapid development of Internet insurance has brought commercial health insurance into the public eye.Although commercial health insurance has a short development history in China,it is an important part of China’s medical security system and has been promoted and supported by a serials of policies.The State Council has issued important documents such as“Several Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Modern Insurance Service Industry”and“Several Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Commercial Health Insurance”,which have pointed out the significance requirements for the development of China’s commercial health insurance,established an implementation framework,and proposed key measures to vigorously promote its development.Against this backdrop,this article analyzes the impacts of environmental pollution and residents’perception of risk on commercial health insurance consumption,and attempts to make recommendations for policy formulation and the development and design of insurance companies’products.In recent years,China has attached great importance to the construction of ecological civilization and environmental pollution control,and has achieved certain progress.However,the impacts of environmental pollution have been accumulating for a long time,so the situation remains severe.Thus the environmental governance of China still has a long way to go.On the other hand,the impact of environmental pollution on the health of residents has been revealing.Country residents have also realized that environmental pollution brings with it great health risks,thereby adjusting their risk decision-making behaviors.Commercial health insurance provides a channel for risk management and has been developing rapidly in recent years.This paper discusses the impact of environmental pollution on residents’health needs,based on the health production function created by Grossman（1972）and the health depreciation rate designed by Cropper（1981）.Based on the expected utility theory,the impact of changes in residents’risk perception on insurance willingness is discussed.Furthermore,using the prospect theory of Kahneman and Tversky（1979）,the impacts of information shocks from environmental pollution incidents and the adjusting effect of residents’perception of risk have been studied.The empirical part of the article selected 31 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions in China（except for Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan due to different statistical calibers）from 2006 to 2017 for a total of 12 years of panel data to analyze the impacts of environmental pollution and residents’perception of risk on commercial health insurance consumption.Cross-terms of environmental pollution and residents’education level have also been imported to help investigate.Here we established a fixed-effects model,a differential generalized method of moments estimation model,and a systematic generalized method of moments estimation model in order to conduct an empirical analysis of the effects of environmental pollution and risk perception on health insurance consumption.Robustness tests have been conducted as well.After that,the Moran’s I Index was introduced to test the spatial correlation of China’s current commercial health insurance development.The empirical conclusions are as follows:1.Environmental pollution will have a certain inhibitory effect on residents’commercial health insurance consumption in the current period,but it will show a strong positive driving effect in the lagging period.2.The response of residents’risk perception is also hysteretic.Due to the crowding-out effect of other environmental protection methods and health consumption substitutes,insurance consumption was suppressed in the short term;in the long run,the higher the education level of the residents and the stronger the risk consciousness are,the more obvious the insurance tendency will be.3.In areas where people possess a high level of education,the increase in environmental pollution has a stronger positive stimulus effect on the current consumption of commercial health insurance;correspondingly,the impact of environmental pollution information can help raise residents’risk awareness,thereby promoting residents’further development,increasing consumption of commercial health insurance products.4.In the past ten years,compared with water pollution,air pollution has a greater impact on the health status and medical costs of residents in China,and receives a more intuitive and strong perception from residents.Based on the research content and conclusions of this article,we put forward the following suggestions to China’s current public health and commercial healthinsurance policies and the design and sales of commercial health insurance products by insurance institutions:1.Increase the public media’s promotion of commercial health protection concepts and strengthen health risk management education.2.The government should promote the establishment of an industry health medical dataplatform.3.In accordance with the regional environmental pollution problems,insurance companies should accurately design and develop health insurance products.Insurance companies should promote the supply-side reform of commercial healthinsurance:they can try to develop health management products to better meet consumer needs.