Research On The Impact Of Air Pollution On The Demand For Commercial Health Insurance

Air pollution may affect residents both physically and psychologically,thus affecting residents' needs for commercial health insurance.In this paper,cities at prefecture level and above are used as our research samples.We use the average annual air quality index(AQI)as explanatory variable,health insurance density as explained variable respectively.Through the study of the relationship between AQI and the density of commercial health insurance,we find that people's health may be worse in areas with high AQI.Besides,high AQI may bring psychological burden and serious negative emotions.All those harm above will lead to the concerns of health that will make residents tend to buy commercial health insurance.However,after dividing the research samples by degree of contamination,the paper finds that the positive impact of air pollution on the demand for health insurance is declining;moreover,when the air quality in a region deteriorates to some extent,the positive impact of air pollution on commercial health insurance is no longer significant and turns into negative.Thus,there is a "U" type relationship between air pollution and demand for commercial health insurance.In addition,the robustness test in this paper also proves that the residents' health insurance needs will also be aff-ected by the air pollution in neighboring cities.The reason may be that at the level of year,there is a convergence in the air pollution in the cities in the region.This article also proves that Air pollution will also affect demand for life insurance.The reason may be that air pollution also leads to a decrease in life expectancy of residents,so purchasing life insurance can be used to cope with the risk of death.This paper confirms that air pollution does have an impact on the demand for health insurance from the theoretical and the empirical aspects,which not only provides reference for insurance copanies' health insurance pricing but also brings some significance to the government in formulating environmental policies.Besides,this paper constructs the system of how air pollution affect demand for health insurance.