| China’s economy has made extraordinary achievements in the past 40 years since the reform and opening up,but the growth of China’s economy has been mainly driven by the dual factor of "investment + net exports",and this economic development model has become increasingly unsustainable since China’s economy has entered the new normal,therefore,the expansion of domestic demand and the transformation and upgrading of consumption will become the new growth point of China’s economy.As a kind of high-level consumption for the pursuit of spiritual needs,the level of cultural consumption reflects the quality of a country’s economic development,and the improvement of the level of cultural consumption is not only conducive to the expansion of China’s domestic demand and the transformation and upgrading of consumption,but also expected to become the "pillar" of China’s stable economic operation and the "booster" of high-quality development in the future.However,the current level of cultural consumption of Chinese residents is still relatively low,especially since 2011,the proportion of cultural consumption expenditure of Chinese residents has always remained between 11%-12%,the lower level of cultural consumption is not conducive to the transformation and upgrading of China’s economy,and is not conducive to meeting the "people’s need for a better life".On the other hand,commercial insurance in China has not only had a rapid development in recent years,but also,according to international experience,there is still considerable room for its future development,meanwhile,according to relevant theories,commercial insurance can promote the growth of residents’ consumption and enhance consumers’ cultural consumption by alleviating uncertainty,enhancing persistent income,satisfying psychological security needs,optimizing asset allocation,etc.Therefore,studying how commercial insurance affects cultural consumption and the extent and structure of the impact has important theoretical and practical significance for promoting the transformation and upgrading of China’s economy and improving the happiness of Chinese residents under the above background.This paper firstly compares and provides a comprehensive review of the relevant literature on cultural consumption,underconsumption,and the relationship between insurance and consumption at home and abroad,and introduces the theory and mechanism of action of commercial insurance affecting cultural consumption;secondly,it details the current development status,characteristics and main issues of commercial insurance and cultural consumption in China;again,based on the previous analysis,the research hypothesis is proposed,and using 2018 CFPS data,the impact of household commercial insurance participation on cultural consumption and consumption upgrading is examined using the ordinary least squares method,and endogeneity is discussed using PSM and treatment effect model,followed by further heterogeneity studies and robustness tests in this paper to make the estimation results more reliable;Finally,this paper further discusses how to enhance residents’ cultural consumption and promote the transformation and upgrading of China’s consumption from the perspectives of expanding commercial insurance coverage,strengthening the overall coordination and differentiated design.The main findings of this paper are:First,households’ participation in commercial insurance can significantly promote their per capita cultural consumption level,and the promotion effect on the absolute level of cultural consumption increases with the increase of its quantile,i.e.,the promotion of commercial insurance on residents’ cultural consumption is obvious and far-reaching.Second,compared with other types of consumption,the promotion effect of household participation in commercial insurance on cultural consumption is stronger and more obvious,i.e.,household participation in commercial insurance most of all promotes the enhancement of cultural consumption,which is conducive to promoting the consumption upgrade of Chinese residents.Third,as far as the heterogeneity analysis of the sub-sample regressions,the promotion effect of commercial insurance participation on cultural consumption is stronger for households in urban areas,eastern regions and high-income groups,i.e.,there is group heterogeneity in the incentive effect of commercial insurance on cultural consumption.The possible innovations of this paper are:First,it is innovative in terms of research perspective.The current research on the consumption effect of insurance tends to focus on total consumption and daily consumption,but there is little research on higher level cultural consumption,and there is a general lack of discussion on the level of consumption and consumption upgrading.This paper is innovative in examining the relationship between the two from a commercial insurance perspective,using cultural consumption as an entry point.Second,it is more appropriate in terms of research methodology.Firstly,the existing literature tends to use two-stage least squares when discussing the endogeneity of insurance participation,but insurance participation is usually a dummy variable,when the instrumental variables approach would no longer be the most effective,whereas this paper uses a more appropriate treatment effect model for endogenous dummy variables,which is more appropriate in terms of empirical methods.Secondly,while previous studies have tended to use macro data,this paper uses micro data with a large amount of data.With the vast geography of China,the cultural consumption gap between different regions and income groups is large,so micro data can more comprehensively and objectively reflect the differences in cultural consumption between different groups in China and more realistically fit the current national conditions of China. |
