The Effect of Insurance Knowledge on the Sales of Insurance

Abstract

The world we live in is full of uncertainties and risks. Individuals, families, businesses, properties and assets are exposed to different types and levels of risks, so the importance of insurance is imperative for everyone.
As regards that there have been few investigations about the effect of education on the sales of insurance; the insurance market suffers from a lack of study about the effect of insurance knowledge on the sales of insurance. Hence, for the first time, this research investigates about the effect of insurance knowledge (individuals who have knowledge of insurance either their education or their occupation is related to insurance), as a substantial factor, on the sales of insurance in Iran. Our main hypothesis is that the insurance knowledge has the positive effect on the sales of insurance. In order to test this hypothesis, we consider travel insurance. In the first step, we test the effect of risk avoidance along with other individual’s characteristics such as gender, age, marital status, occupation, education, Individual travel, group travel, air travel, maritime trip and land trip on the sales for travel insurance. Then in the second step, for investigating about the effect of insurance knowledge, we divide the population of interest into two groups, one with insurance knowledge and another one without insurance knowledge and compare risk aversion level of these two groups. The methodology of use in this study, questionnaires that gathered from stratified random sampling and applying logistic regression model. The results indicate that risk avoidance has a positive relationship with travel insurance sales. In addition, risk avoidance level is higher in a group with insurance knowledge. Hence, insurance knowledge has a positive relationship with travel insurance sales.