AUTHOR=Ren Tianxing , Zhao Qiang , Wang Wenqing , Ding Xuemeng 

TITLE=Air pollution, residents’ concern and commercial health insurance’s sustainable development

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Environmental Science

VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-science/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1136274

DOI=10.3389/fenvs.2023.1136274

ISSN=2296-665X

ABSTRACT=This paper empirically analyses the impact and mechanism of air pollution on Chinese commercial health insurance’s sustainable development. The analysis is performed with the IV-Probit and IV-Tobit models using thermal inversion as an instrumental variable for air pollution, with Chinese households as the study population and 2018 as the study period. The findings show that: (1) an increase in PM2.5 concentration has a significant positive impact on households' willingness to participate in purchasing commercial health insurance, with each 1% increase in PM2.5 concentration increasing the likelihood of households participating in purchasing commercial health insurance by 1.49%; (2) an increase in PM2.5 concentration has a significant positive impact on household participation in purchasing commercial health insurance, with each 1% increase in PM2.5 concentration associated with a 11.48% increase in household expenditure on commercial health insurance as a proportion of total income; and (3) Residents’ concern is an important channel linking air pollution to commercial health Insurance’s sustainable development, where pollution reporting plays a negative transmission role, protective behaviors play a positive transmission role, and healthy depreciation plays a positive transmission role.