Life insurance purchase behaviour: A systematic review and directions for future research

Abstract

This paper presents a framework-based systematic review of existing research to understand the purchase behaviour of consumers for life insurance products. The TCM framework is adopted to provide an organized review of the theory, context and methods used in the articles under review. Antecedents, decisions and outcomes in the context of consumers’ life insurance purchase behaviour are also discussed in detail using the ADO framework. The review aggregates 136 unique antecedents derived from 76 relevant articles and classifies them into eight broad categories. Further, the reasons for obtaining a positive or negative effect of a particular antecedent on life insurance purchase decisions or outcomes are also fully explored. Finally, TCM and ADO frameworks are used to identify the research gaps in the extant life insurance literature. Some of the important future avenues of the research, especially from the perspective of behavioural economics and pandemic scenarios such as COVID-19, are then explored.