Centro de Documentacion de Fundación MAPFRE - The Impact of culture on the demand for non-life insurance

Notes: Sumario: Regression techniques are applied to an unbalanced panel data that includes 68 countries observed over a ten-year period, to explore the factors that affect non-life insurance demand across nations. While previous literature has discovered several significant economic, demographic, and institutional variables, little attention has been devoted to cultural dimensions. We find that non-life insurance consumption is adversely impacted in countries where a large fraction of the population has Islamic beliefs. Also highly significant are three of the cultural scores developed by Hofstede in a celebrated study: Power Distance, Individualism, and Uncertainty Avoidance. An important finding is that culture impacts non-life insurance more in affluent countries, with an adjusted R-square coefficient increasing by 11.7%, than in developing countries where the R-square coefficient increase due to cultural impacts is only 1.2%. These results have implications for multinational insurers seeking to enter a new market. Ceteris Paribus, these insurers should target countries, and population segments within these countries, that exhibit low Power Distance, and high Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance scores.Related records: En: Astin bulletin. - Belgium : ASTIN and AFIR Sections of the International Actuarial Association = ISSN 0515-0361. - 05/11/2012 Volumen 42 Número 2 - noviembre 2012 , p. 501-528Materia / lugar / evento: Seguros no vida Cultura Países desarrollados Países en desarrollo Empresas de seguros Perspectivas del seguro Estudios estadísticos Análisis socioeconómico Multinacionales Other categories: 32

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