Risk attention and insurance uptake

Abstract We examine risk attention as an overlooked driver of insurance uptake. We leverage the COVID‐19 pandemic as a natural experiment—when all COVID‐related expenses were covered by public funds in China and public attention shifted to the only major under‐covered source of catastrophic medical spending: critical illnesses (CI). Using a unique private CI insurance dataset with both unbound insurance applications and bound contracts, we document a rise in bound insurance contracts and a disproportionately larger increase in unbound applications, particularly among lower‐risk individuals. This surge reflects the increased interest and awareness of CI risks and insurance, as well as realized CI insurance uptake. We find robust evidence that the surge is driven by heightened attention to previously overlooked CI risks, and rule out competing explanations.