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The impact of regret and worry on the threshold level of concern for flood insurance demand: Evidence from Dutch homeowners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Peter John Robinson*
Affiliation:
Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
W. J. Wouter Botzen
Affiliation:
Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.), Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
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Abstract

It has been argued that individuals behave according to a threshold level of concern decision rule when considering protection against risk: if the perceived probability of the risk is below a threshold level, then the likelihood of the risk is treated as zero and protection is deemed unnecessary. Little is known about the determinants of this threshold nor about whether individual thresholds are related to risk specific emotions like worry and regret. We study threshold probabilities and factors that influence these in the context of flood insurance decision making. Based on data collected from 1,041 Dutch homeowners, we find that on average the threshold level of concern for flood insurance demand is negatively related to the expected regret an individual might feel about not purchasing flood insurance if a flood occurs, as well as to worry about flooding.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
The authors license this article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors [2018] This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Figure 0

Table 1: Probability and loss combinations presented for the flood insurance decisions.

Figure 1

Table 2: Coding of the dependent variable (threshold): the number of successive times individuals accepted the flood risk and remained uninsured.

Figure 2

Figure 1: Distribution of Likert scale responses for anticipated regret and anticipatory worry.

Figure 3

Table 3: Correlation coefficients between variables.

Figure 4

Table 4: OLS regression results.

Figure 5

Table 5: OLS regression results excluding stochastic dominance violators.

Figure 6

Figure A1: Payment illustration.

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