Research On Air Pollution Affecting The Demand Of Commercial Health Insurance In China

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has developed rapidly,but the extensive economic development model has brought serious air pollution problems.Although the air pollution situation in China has improved with the joint efforts of the whole society,the proportion of cities with excessive air quality is still as high as 53.4%??in 2019,and the problem of air pollution in China is still outstanding.Air pollution can directly or indirectly endanger people’s physical and mental health,and cause negative effects on people’s lives and work.With the increase in people’s income levels and increased attention to health issues,commercial health insurance has made considerable progress with the support of relevant government policies in China.According to data,the average annual growth rate of commercial health insurance premiums in China from 2011 to 2019 was 33.7%.As of the end of 2019,the premium income of commercial health insurance in China was 706.6 billion yuan.The outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in 2020 has greatly stimulated people’s awareness of health risk management and further released people’s demand for commercial health insurance.The "Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Medical Security System" promulgated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council in March of the same year clearly pointed out the need to "speed up the development of commercial health insurance and enrich the supply of health insurance products",which pointed out the direction for the development of commercial health insurance,and provided strong policy support for the development of commercial health insurance.Literature and relevant data indicate that air pollution will increase the incidence of certain diseases and cause psychological worries.Against the background of the severe air pollution situation in China,with people’s increased risk awareness and greater attention to health issues,people are more inclined to adopt risk management measures including purchasing commercial health insurance after they perceive the health risks caused by air pollution,thereby affecting the demand of commercial health insurance.Based on this,this paper takes the impact of air pollution on commercial health insurance demand in China as the research object,from theoretical analysis to practical analysis,from normative analysis to empirical analysis,to explore the mechanism of influence,and to find out the path of influence,aiming to provide a reference for improving health insurance development policies and optimizing insurance companies’ health insurance pricing factors.This paper is composed of an introduction and four parts.The introduction part introduces the research background and significance of this paper,reviews relevant domestic and foreign literature,explains the research content and research methods of the paper,introduces the paper structure and technical route,and points out innovations and shortcomings of the paper.The first chapter is the theoretical analysis part,which provides theoretical support for the full text from risk management theory,prospect theory and demand theory,and builds a theoretical analysis framework for the full text.The second chapter is the actual analysis part,which analyzes the current situation of air pollution and commercial health insurance demand in China,and grasps the relationship between the two from reality.The third chapter is the empirical analysis part,which uses Chinese provincial panel data from 2007 to 2018 to empirically analyze the impact of air pollution on demand of commercial health insurance in China,and explore whether residents’ health plays an intermediary role in it.The last part is the research conclusions and recommendations.This part summarizes the research conclusions of this paper: air pollution will promote the release of commercial health insurance demand in China;the health status of residents plays a part of the intermediary role in the process of air pollution affecting the demand of commercial health insurance,that is,air pollution can affect the health status of residents,therefore affecting the demand of commercial health insurance in China;the impact of air pollution on the demand for commercial health insurance differs in the eastern,central and western regions of China,and the impact is greater in the eastern region than in the central and western regions,which may be related to higher industrial level,higher economic level and higher education level in the eastern region.Based on the research of the full text,the paper gives corresponding suggestions from the two levels of the government and insurance companies on improving health insurance development policies,optimizing health insurance pricing factors,therefore fully releasing the demand of commercial health insurance in China.The innovation of this paper is to try to theoretically analyze the path that air pollution affects the demand for commercial health insurance,and to test the path through empirical methods,enriching the existing research in this field.The shortcomings of this paper: first,due to the limitation of data availability,the data of the past two years were not included in the empirical analysis,and the timeliness of the data affects the conviction of the conclusion;the second is that the empirical research only selects the health status of residents as the single intermediary variable,which has limitations.