Title: Demystifying social media usage for insurance-related purchase intentions among senior users in the pandemic period

Authors: Richa Misra; Renuka Mahajan; Nidhi Singh

Addresses: Jaipuria Institute of Management, A 32A Sector 62 Noida, UP, India ' Jaipuria Institute of Management, A 32A Sector 62 Noida, UP, India ' Jaipuria Institute of Management, A 32A Sector 62 Noida, UP, India

Abstract: Due to the pandemic, there has been an increasing demand and awareness for health insurance policies, particularly by the senior population. Towards preparedness, social media has risen to prominence as the most effective means of disseminating health and insurance-related information. The research investigates the factors impacting older users' motivation to use mobile social networking sites (MSNS) to promote health-related insurance. The online questionnaire was administered to 201 participants in the age group of 60 plus years. PLS-SEM was used to test the hypotheses based on constructs derived from the protection motivation theory (PMT). The findings exhibited the associations between different dimensions like fear of COVID, usefulness, social efficacy with protection motivation. Protection motivation positively impacts the intention to purchase insurance products among senior's social media users. The study offers implications for insurance companies to further capitalise on the potential of senior social networking users.

Keywords: mobile social networking sites; MSNS; life/health insurance; COVID-19; protection motivation theory; PMT; elderly; social self-efficacy; SSE; fear of COVID scale; usefulness; perceived vulnerability; purchase intention.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2022.122396

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2022 Vol.18 No.1, pp.64 - 86

Received: 05 Feb 2021
Accepted: 20 Sep 2021
Published online: 22 Apr 2022 *

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