The Effect of personality traits, social status and perceived risk on purchase intention of life insurance

Insuring is an enormous human capital that requires deep analyses of personality, social and cognitive actions. In other fields of insurance activities, the insurer may be happy with its organizational relationships, but the development of life insurance depends on influencing people's minds and feelings. Therefore, considering that people with different personality traits and social statuses have different reactions to the offer of life insurance in terms of risk perception, this survey-based study deals with the structured analysis of the purchase intention of life insurance.

The current research is practical in terms of purpose, and is descriptive and exploratory in terms of method. Data was collected in the library and field using unstructured in-depth interview tools and questionnaires in a qualitative and quantitative manner. The theoretical and philosophical paradigm on which this research is based is a mixed interpretivism-positivist type. The research method used in the qualitative part is the descriptive phenomenological approach of the reflective world of Dahlberg et al. (2008). In the quantitative part of the questionnaire, a 5-point Likert scale was distributed through the sampling method. The data was obtained from 265 questionnaires in three regions of Tehran. The multiple linear regression method was used using SPSS software in data analysis.

The results of the hypothesis analysis showed that the dimension of committment has a significant relationship with the purchase intention of life insurance. Also, the findings show that the typology of the policyholder's personality affects the perceived risk, ultimately affecting the customer's action to receive life insurance. As conducted in this research, the dimension of commitment has a significant negative relationship with perceived risk. Also, a meaningful inverse relationship was found between perceived risk and purchase intention of life insurance. But the results showed that no social class factors affect purchasing life insurance.

Exploring this research's results effectively solves insurers' challenge in correctly identifying target groups and analyzing diverse perceptions of people. According to the investigation results, life insurance, with its benefits, has been proven to enable a person to cover the uncertainty of risks. Insurance companies should consider the differences in families' attitudes to risk, explain the different types of life insurance, and provide recommendations regarding the appropriate insurance according to the conditions and demands of the customers. Also, they should explain the relevant ’protective and investment functions to customers and ensure that families with different risk attitudes are actively involved in the rational and scientific purchase of life insurance. The results of this study provide a better understanding of people’s responses to risk based on personality traits and show the importance of understanding the risk of not having a life insurance. If we know information about people's personality traits, we can predict people's behavior so that life insurance providers can design appropriate interventions to raise awareness among people in society.