The Influence of Insurance Aggregator Platforms on Health Insurance Purchase Intention

Abstract

Insurance aggregator websites have become one of the most popular digital mediums for comparison and evaluation of health insurance policies. Nevertheless, consumers' purchase intentions can be influenced by how useful, usable, influential, and facilitating the consumers find the websites to be. In this research, the impact of these antecedents on health insurance purchase intention through insurance aggregator websites is examined where ATTITUDE (ATT) serves as a mediator while DIGITAL LITERACY (DL) acts as a moderator. A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was used. Data were collected from an online survey conducted among individuals from Kerala who had visited an insurance aggregator website at least once. Out of 450 respondents, 412 valid responses were obtained after eliminating those containing missing data and outliers. Five-point Likert scale was used to measure the variables, and hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS. Bootstrapping analysis with 5,000 replications was used to establish the significance of the hypothesized relationships. Performance expectancy (PE) had the most effect on ATT (β = 0.31, t = 4.82, p < 0.001), followed by Effort Expectancy (EE) (β = 0.24, t = 3.65, p < 0.001), Social Influence (SI) (β = 0.19, t = 2.91, p = 0.004), and Facilitating Conditions (FC) (β = 0.159, t = 3.39, p < 0.001). The attitude toward behaviour (ATT) also had a significant effect on Behavioural Intention (BI) (β = 0.52, t = 7.14, p < 0.001). Significant indirect effects on Behavioural Intention via ATT were found for Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social Influence (SI), and Facilitating Conditions (FC) (p < 0.001). Digital literacy (DL) also moderated the ATT-BI relationship (β = 0.17, t = 2.53, p = 0.011). The proposed model explains 58% of ATT and 49% of BI variance. In conclusion, the results show that usefulness and usability of aggregator platform, social influence, and facilitating conditions affect users' attitudes, whereas ATT is an important determinant of health insurance purchase intentions. Digital literacy increases the ATT-BI relationship.