DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2018.380
title: Perceived benefits and barriers influencing the adoption of life insurance among Thai people

description: Life insurance is a contract between a policy owner and an insurance company, where the policy owner agrees to exchange the death benefit or coverage financial amount upon the death of an insured person by paying the premium for a period to an insurance company. Life insurance is one of risk management important tools for the policy owner to manage their financial plan when the accident occurs.Normally, people will purchase the products when they are in needs but for life insurance is different, when you are in need, you might not be able to purchase it due to your health condition and so on. Which means people must prepare and purchase the product once they do not need it and it is challenging for the consumer behavior towards product adoption. Life insurance could partially help you on the unfortune events for human beings such as premature death, longer life expectancy, disabled and severe illness. According to a Thailand National Statistic (2018), Thai people have relatively low number in life insurance adoption. In every 100 of Thai people, only 37 insurance issues, unlike the developed countries such as: Japan has 322 insurance issues in every 100 people, Singapore has 267 insurance issues in every 100 people, South Korea has 170 insurance issues in every 100 people and Malaysia has 40 insurance issues in every 100 people. Certainly, this issue has an impact to Thai people’s life stability. Regarding the Thai Life Assurance Association (2018), Thai life insurance market grew 5.89% in 2017. In 2018, the Thai Life Assurance Association expects the sector to expand by between 4% to 6% which means the industry is expected to grow at the flat or slower rate. Therefore, the study of perceived benefits and barriers influencing the adoption of life insurance among Thai people will help identify the factors which influencing the life insurance decision making process among adopters and non-adopters. The objective of this study included•Identify the factors influencing the adoption of life insurance among life insurance adopters•Identify the factors influencing the non-adoption of life insurance among non-life insurance adoptersThe study was conducted both qualitative and quantitative by in-depth interviews and survey sessions which required life insurance adopters and life insurance non-adopters as respondents in this study who are Thai citizens and qualified for life insurance.Research Methodology1.In-Depth InterviewThe in-depth interview sessions were conducted twice. Three respondents are life insurance adopters and three respondents are life insurance non-adopters, total six respondents. The first time was conducted in order to understand the perceived benefits and barriers of life insurance adopter. The second session was to interview the non-adopters in order to understand the perceived benefits and barriers influencing the non-adoption of life insurance among Thai people. The sessions took approximately 30 minutes per respondent.2.Descriptive ResearchThe result of the method helped quantify the statistic or data of the research. It was conducted among 200 respondents (80 Non-Adopters and 120 Adopters) through online questionnaire via LINE applications