社会互动对家庭商业保险参与的影响——来自中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)数据的实证分析

本文基于中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)数据,探讨了社会互动对家庭商业保险购买行为的影响。研究发现:社会互动显著提高了家庭商业保险参与的可能性与参与程度,并且在控制了内生性之后,这种促进作用依然显著;同时本文通过金融知识和商业保险信任度等变量验证了社会互动影响家庭商业保险参与行为的两种作用渠道;异质性分析表明,社会互动对于东部和中部地区、中等学历、高收入水平、低参与率社区中家庭的促进作用更大。本文的研究为我国商业保险市场的发展提供了一个新的社会特征视角,重视社会互动的促进作用,加强保险业诚信建设,以此推动我国商业保险业健康快速发展。

The Effect of Social Interaction on Household Commercial Insurance Purchases: Evidence from the China Household Finance Survey

As one of the three pillars of the modern financial industry, insurance plays an important role in economic compensation, capital financing, and social management, and it is known as the “patron saint” of socioeconomic development. Although China's commercial insurance market has developed rapidly over the past 40 years into the world's second largest insurance market, the insurance industry is still in the primary stage of development from the perspective of insurance depth and density. The literature generally points to limited participation among residents as an important reason that China's commercial insurance industry is not strong despite its large size. The key to solving the problem of limited participation is to identify factors that affect residents' purchasing of commercial insurance. At present, there are relatively few studies on the influence of social interaction on family commercial insurance purchases, and no consistent conclusions have been reached so far.
To address this research gap, the present paper studies the influence of social interaction on family commercial insurance purchases and its channels using data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) 2013. First, by selecting eight variables related to social interaction and using the iterative principal factor method, this paper constructs a comprehensive social interaction index. Second, Probit and Tobit models are used to conduct empirical analysis, and two channels are verified through the variables of financial knowledge and degree of trust in commercial insurance. Third, potential endogeneity problems related to social interaction are overcome by constructing instrumental variables, and heterogeneity analysis and robustness tests are conducted. Finally, based on tracking data from the 2013-2015 CHFS, logical problems related to the time inconsistency between social interaction and household commercial insurance purchases are overcome. The results show that social interaction promotes household purchases in the commercial insurance market, and the effect is still significant after solving the endogeneity problem. In addition, this paper confirms two channels of social interaction that affect commercial insurance purchases. According to heterogeneity analysis, social interaction plays a more important role in promoting insurance purchases among families in the eastern and central regions, those with medium levels of education, those with high income levels, and those in low-purchases-rate communities.
The main innovations of this paper are fourfold. First, the use of CHFS data to examine the relationship between social interaction and household commercial insurance purchases allows our findings to be strongly representative, as the data span 29 provinces and more than 28,000 households. In this way, we avoid the drawbacks of previous studies that fail to provide a comprehensive picture of residents' insurance purchases in China. Second, by using the iterative principal factor method to construct a comprehensive social interaction index, we avoid the concern that a single variable cannot accurately describe social interaction. Third, by verifying two channels of social interaction's impact on household commercial insurance purchases, our paper allows for a more thorough understanding of the effect of social interaction. Finally, potential bias in regression results caused by endogeneity problems and time inconsistency is solved by constructing instrumental variables.
This paper is the first to explore the development of China's commercial insurance market from the perspective of social characteristics. Efforts to promote insurance market development should go beyond economic factors and also recognize the importance of residents' social characteristics. Therefore, relevant agencies should pay attention to the role of social interaction in the development of insurance. It is also necessary to further standardize China's insurance market and strengthen the trust of commercial insurance conditions to improve the depth and breadth of insurance purchases and promote the industry's development.