Evaluation of the crop insurance management for soybean risk of natural disasters in Jilin Province, China

Abstract

Crop insurance is one of the most useful risk management tools for natural disasters. Jilin as the main soybean production province in China suffers the natural disaster frequently by the global warming. The purpose of this study was to promote the crop insurance management of soybean risk of natural disaster in Jilin by identifying the factors affecting farmers’ decisions about participating in soybean crop insurance and estimating the willingness to pay (WTP) for soybean insurance. The analysis of data from a farmer survey in Jilin showed that droughts and pests were the main soybean disasters, most respondents recognized the importance of crop insurance, and government subsidies can significantly increase farmers’ enthusiasm about purchasing insurance; diversity of income sources was significantly negatively correlated with willingness to participate in soybean insurance, and diversity of soybean production disasters, level of awareness of the importance of soybean insurance and whether crop insurance had been used were all significantly positively correlated with farmer willingness to participate in insurance; on average, farmers were willing to pay a soybean crop insurance premium of 48.75 ¥/hm2 (equals 7.73 $/hm2, referring to the exchange rate of 2011 and 2012), and the WTP-to-premium ratio was 21.69 %. Starting the soybean crop insurance in the frequent natural disaster areas, improving farmers’ understanding of crop insurance by advertisement and training, launching some crop insurance test products to increase farmer’s experience, and implementing subsidies for crop insurance insistently were suggested to promote the development of soybean crop insurance in Jilin.