Professor

The experiment contains four conditions.

Control Group: TREAT = 0

Respondents receive no additional experimental information before answering the post-treatment outcome questions.

Household Shock and Financial-Risk Information Treatment: TREAT = 1

Respondents receive brief information explaining that households may face shocks such as serious illness, accidental injury, or temporary interruption of the main source of income. Such shocks may simultaneously generate additional medical or rehabilitation expenses and reduce household income. The information also explains the basic risk-sharing function of insurance, whereby households may transfer part of the financial consequences of low-probability but potentially high-loss events to an insurer subject to the terms of an insurance contract.

Retirement and Longevity-Risk Information Treatment: TREAT = 2

Respondents receive brief information explaining that longer life expectancy may increase the number of years spent in retirement. Retirement may involve reduced or discontinued labor income while households continue to incur living, medical, and potentially long-term-care expenditures. Because longevity and future medical and care needs are uncertain, required retirement resources cannot be known with certainty in advance. The information also describes retirement savings, personal pensions, commercial pension insurance, and long-term-care protection as alternative or complementary tools for long-term retirement preparation and risk management.

Insurance Consumer Protection and Contract-Information Treatment: TREAT = 3

Respondents receive brief information explaining that insurance coverage depends on contractual features such as insured benefits, exclusions, waiting periods, deductibles, premium-payment periods, surrender provisions, and claims conditions. The information also explains consumers’ rights to information, choice, fair transactions, and lawful dispute resolution, and emphasizes the role of clear disclosure in helping consumers understand insurance products.

The substantive survey questions preceding the intervention are identical across treatment groups. The post-treatment outcome questions are also identical across groups. Only the randomized information presented immediately before the post-treatment outcomes differs across experimental conditions.

2026-08-31

2026-09-30

Primary Outcome 1: Willingness to Increase Insurance Protection

Measured by Question 54.

Respondents report, on a scale from 0 to 10, their willingness to increase health, accident, or life-insurance protection for their household during the next year, conditional on household income remaining basically stable.

Higher values indicate stronger demand for additional household insurance protection.

Primary Outcome 2: Willingness to Pay for Insurance Protection

Measured by Question 55.

Respondents report the maximum annual premium their household would be willing to pay for a commercial insurance product with clearly specified coverage that meets household needs.

Response categories are:

RMB 0
Less than RMB 1,000
RMB 1,000–3,000
RMB 3,000–5,000
RMB 5,000–10,000
More than RMB 10,000

The principal analysis will preserve the ordered categorical structure of the response. Alternative codings may be reported as robustness analyses.

Primary Outcome 3: Pension and Long-Term-Care Participation Intention

Measured by Question 56.

Respondents report, on a scale from 0 to 10, how likely they would be to participate during the following year in a voluntary pension or long-term-care protection program.

Higher values indicate stronger intended participation.

Secondary Outcome 1: Financial Information Search

Measured by Question 57.

Respondents report, on a scale from 0 to 10, the likelihood that they would actively seek additional information during the next three months about insurance protection suitable for their household.

Secondary Outcome 2: Priority Assigned to Insurance Protection

Measured by Question 58.

Respondents report, on a scale from 0 to 10, how strongly they would prioritize additional insurance protection relative to saving and ordinary consumption if the household received additional discretionary funds during the next year.

Secondary Outcome 3: Acceptance of a Transparent Insurance Product

Measured by Question 59.

Respondents report, on a scale from 0 to 10, their acceptance of purchasing an insurance product when its coverage, exclusions, costs, and claims procedures are clearly and transparently specified and the product meets the household’s actual needs.

Secondary/Behavioral Outcome 4: Demand for Financial Information

Measured by Question 61.

At the end of the experimental outcome module, respondents are offered a free copy of the Handbook on Household Risk Protection and Pension Finance and indicate whether they wish to receive it.

The outcome equals one for respondents who choose to receive the handbook and zero for respondents who indicate that they do not currently need it.

If the electronic survey system separately records whether the respondent actually opens, downloads, or requests the handbook, that realized information-acquisition measure will be reported separately as an additional behavioral outcome.

The study is a four-arm randomized information experiment embedded in a large household financial survey conducted in Henan Province, China.

The study plans to obtain approximately 10,000 valid survey responses. Recruitment is designed to cover respondents with heterogeneous income, age, urban-rural residence, and exposure to financial services. The target sample structure consists approximately of 2,500 urban high-income/middle-income respondents, 3,500 urban wage-earning or other ordinary residents, 2,500 county/township/rural residents, and 1,500 retired or elderly respondents. These figures represent overall sample-structure targets rather than fixed quotas for individual survey sites.

All respondents complete the same pre-treatment questionnaire. The pre-treatment module collects demographic and household characteristics, household assets and liabilities, financial fragility and economic shocks, subjective and objective financial literacy, risk and time preferences, economic expectations and uncertainty, insurance participation and protection gaps, insurance claims experience and institutional trust, health status, long-term-care experience, pension preparation, and digital financial capability.

Respondents are assigned to one of four experimental groups:

Control: no additional information;
Household shock and financial-risk information;
Retirement and longevity-risk information;
Insurance consumer protection and contract information.

The planned treatment allocation ratio is approximately 1:1:1:1.

Random assignment will be determined in advance by the research team and will not be chosen by interviewers or respondents. Randomized blocks will be used so that the four experimental versions are approximately balanced within major survey sites while preserving an unpredictable distribution sequence for field investigators.

Apart from the randomized information treatment in Section 8, the four versions of the questionnaire contain the same questions, response options, question ordering, and layout.

Interviewers are prohibited from selecting respondents’ treatment groups, changing questionnaire versions, interpreting or elaborating on the experimental information, recommending specific insurance products, or inducing particular responses.

The main statistical analysis will follow the intention-to-treat principle. Respondents will therefore be analyzed according to the group to which they were originally randomized, irrespective of whether they correctly identify the treatment in the manipulation-check question.

The principal specification will compare each information-treatment group with the control group. Where applicable, models will include predetermined randomization-stratum or survey-site fixed effects and pre-treatment covariates to improve precision. Unadjusted treatment estimates will also be reported.

Baseline balance will be assessed using predetermined pre-treatment characteristics, including age, gender, education, household income, urban-rural residence, existing insurance coverage, financial literacy, financial fragility, risk preferences, health status, and prior household long-term-care experience.

The confirmatory analysis will focus on outcomes specified prior to observing the experimental results. Analyses restricted to respondents who pass the manipulation check will be treated as supplementary rather than as substitutes for the intention-to-treat estimates.

Not available

Individual-level randomized assignment using randomized blocks within major survey sites.

The research team will generate treatment assignments in advance. Respondents will be allocated approximately equally across the four experimental groups within major survey sites. The intended allocation ratio is 1:1:1:1.

Interviewers will not have discretion to select or alter treatment assignment.

Individual respondent

No

10,000
This is the target number of valid completed questionnaires in the main study.

Not applicable — treatment is individually randomized. If the Registry interface nevertheless requires a numeric value in this field, enter the actual number of survey sites/randomization blocks once that number is finalized rather than inventing a value.

Approximately 2,500 respondents per arm: 2,500 control, 2,500 household shock and financial-risk information, 2,500 retirement and longevity-risk information, and 2,500 insurance consumer protection and contract information. Final realized sample sizes may differ slightly across arms.