Towards a Better Understanding of Insurance Purchase Behavior through a Discrete Choice Experiment

The life insurance purchasing journey can be lengthy and complex. Consumers are often asked to make many decisions among dozens of options. Which factors influence them to select one over others? Why does one person pick one option while another person in an apparently similar situation chooses the other? Is there a scientific reason behind it? 

To address these questions, SCOR’s Behavioral Science team, in partnership with the Université Paris Nanterre, launched a research initiative to look deeper into the mechanism of how and why people make specific decisions when it comes to purchasing life insurance.

To gain insights into which life insurance product features are perceived to be most important to customers, the study applied the Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) methodology to survey over 1,000 consumers. The DCE is an experimental method that allows researchers to quantify the value respondents place on the attributes of goods and services relative to other attributes.  

This article, a part of SCOR’s Behavioral Science and Insurance series gives a summary of the methodology and key initial findings of this research project. 

Check out other articles related to behavioral science and insurance here:
Impact of the Pandemic on Life Insurance Lapses
A Journey toward Lasting Behavioral Change
Covid-19 and the Rise in Consumers’ Awareness of Risk