Malaysian Consumer Intention toward Takaful Scheme for Mental Health Disorders: A Preliminary Findings using Multiple Regression Analysis

Abstract

Mental health disorders are predicted to become the next health concern after heart disease impacting Malaysians by 2020. One in five teenagers felt depressed, two out of five felt anxious, 11.2 percent felt suicidal and 10.1 percent attempted suicide. This statistic extremely alarming and there is an urge for the Islamic wealth protection operators to introduce takaful scheme that cover mental health treatment in Malaysia. This paper investigates the factors influencing Malaysian consumer intention toward takaful scheme for mental health disorders. An applied expanded Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) model were used in the research and the variables of awareness, perception, attitude, subjective norm and intention toward a takaful scheme for mental health disorders were investigated. It is a pilot research carried out in Malaysia. The respondents are 60 Malaysian takaful consumers based on an online survey inside Klang Valley, Malaysia. This study reveals that the mean of attitude with the score of 4.27 is the highest score. The Pearson correlation is positive for both independent and dependent variables. Analysis of regression indicates a strong positive relationship between subjective norm and intention, thus suggesting that subjective norm is an important area to link to intention against mental health disorder takaful scheme.