{"title":"Risk attention and insurance uptake","authors":"Ruo Jia, Jiawei Mo, Ye Yuan, Chang Zhang","doi":"10.1111/jori.70053","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine risk attention as an overlooked driver of insurance uptake. We leverage the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment—when all COVID-related expenses were covered by public funds in China and public attention shifted to the only major under-covered source of catastrophic medical spending: critical illnesses (CI). Using a unique private CI insurance dataset with both unbound insurance applications and bound contracts, we document a rise in bound insurance contracts and a disproportionately larger increase in unbound applications, particularly among lower-risk individuals. This surge reflects the increased interest and awareness of CI risks and insurance, as well as realized CI insurance uptake. We find robust evidence that the surge is driven by heightened attention to previously overlooked CI risks, and rule out competing explanations.</p>","PeriodicalId":51440,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Risk and Insurance","volume":"93 2","pages":"388-418"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2026-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Risk and Insurance","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jori.70053","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/4/30 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We examine risk attention as an overlooked driver of insurance uptake. We leverage the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment—when all COVID-related expenses were covered by public funds in China and public attention shifted to the only major under-covered source of catastrophic medical spending: critical illnesses (CI). Using a unique private CI insurance dataset with both unbound insurance applications and bound contracts, we document a rise in bound insurance contracts and a disproportionately larger increase in unbound applications, particularly among lower-risk individuals. This surge reflects the increased interest and awareness of CI risks and insurance, as well as realized CI insurance uptake. We find robust evidence that the surge is driven by heightened attention to previously overlooked CI risks, and rule out competing explanations.
期刊介绍：
The Journal of Risk and Insurance (JRI) is the premier outlet for theoretical and empirical research on the topics of insurance economics and risk management. Research in the JRI informs practice, policy-making, and regulation in insurance markets as well as corporate and household risk management. JRI is the flagship journal for the American Risk and Insurance Association, and is currently indexed by the American Economic Association’s Economic Literature Index, RePEc, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and others. Issues of the Journal of Risk and Insurance, from volume one to volume 82 (2015), are available online through JSTOR . Recent issues of JRI are available through Wiley Online Library. In addition to the research areas of traditional strength for the JRI, the editorial team highlights below specific areas for special focus in the near term, due to their current relevance for the field.
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