Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
885357 | Journal of Economic Psychology | 2008 | 15 Pages |
One of the most intriguing questions in insurance is the preference of consumers for low or zero deductible insurance policies. This stands in sharp contrast to a theorem proved by Mossin [Mossin, J. (1968). Aspects of rational insurance purchasing. Journal of Political Economy, 76, 553–568], that under quite common assumptions when the price of insurance is higher than its actuarial value, then full coverage is not optimal.We show in a series of experiments that amateur subjects tend to underestimate the value of a policy with a deductible and that the degree of underestimation increases with the size of the deductible. We hypothesize that this tendency is caused by the anchoring heuristic. In particular, in pricing a policy with a deductible subjects first consider the price of a full-coverage policy. Then they anchor on the size of the deductible and subtract it from the price of the full-coverage policy. However, they do not adjust the price enough upward to take into account the fact that there is only a small chance that the deductible will be applied toward their payments. We also show that professionals in the field of insurance are less prone to such a bias. This implies that a policy with a deductible priced according to the true expected payments may seem “overpriced” to the insured and therefore may not be purchased. Since the values of full-coverage policies are not underestimated the insured may find them as relatively better “deals”.