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. 2022 Nov 3:10:1053932.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1053932. eCollection 2022.

The impact of public health education on people's demand for commercial health insurance: Empirical evidence from China

Lifei Gao  1 , Ying Nie  2 , Guojun Wang  2 , Fei Li  3
Affiliations

The impact of public health education on people's demand for commercial health insurance: Empirical evidence from China

Lifei Gao et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Public health education is gaining significance globally, and it is important for managing health risks. This study empirically analyzed the effect of public health education on people's demand for commercial health insurance. And we used the fixed effects and the mediating effect models, and instrumental variables regression in our research based on panel data of 31 provinces (including municipalities and autonomous regions) in China from year 2009 to 2019. The findings show that public health education significantly increases people's demand for commercial health insurance, and this effect remains significant when considering endogeneity and robustness. We further analyzed and found that the increased demand for commercial health insurance is caused by health literacy, health risk perceptions and health risk attitudes. Through heterogeneity analysis, we found that there were significant differences in the effects of public health education in regions with different demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. We found that the effect of health education on promoting people's demand for commercial health insurance is more obvious in regions with high levels of urbanization, proportion of men, education, economic development, medical resources, and social medical insurance coverage. Governments are supposed to take further measures to enhance the effectiveness of public health education, develop high-quality commercial health insurance, and continuously improve health risk coverage.

Keywords: commercial health insurance; health literacy; health risk attitude; health risk perception; public health education.

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Conflict of interest statement

Author FL was employed by China Life Reinsurance Company Ltd. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Theoretical framework.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Commercial health insurance density in China in 2009.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Commercial health insurance density in China in 2019.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Public health education in China in 2009.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Public health education in China in 2019.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Measures to improve public health education and commercial health insurance.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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