From climate threats to financial shields: The impact of meteorological disasters on agricultural insurance purchase behaviors through risk aversion

Increasingly frequent meteorological disasters pose significant challenges to high-quality agricultural production in China. The persistently low uptake of agricultural insurance, a critical tool for climate risk management, remains a pressing concern. Employing crop insurance as a case study and grounded in expected utility theory, this study develops a "meteorological disaster to risk aversion then to insurance purchase behavior" framework to investigate the impact of disasters on farmers' insurance decisions and underlying mechanisms. Key findings indicate: (1) Disasters significantly increase both the propensity to purchase insurance and the level of coverage acquired; this result proves robust across various tests. (2) Heightened risk aversion among farmers, induced by disasters, mediates this effect; greater risk aversion elevates both purchase probability and coverage level. (3) Enhanced information access positively moderates the influence of disasters on purchase behavior. (4) Heterogeneous responses exist: large-scale and low-income farmers demonstrate greater propensity to increase coverage post-disaster, whereas part-time farmers exhibit lower engagement. In the future, the government should further improve the level of agricultural meteorological risk management, strengthen cross-sectoral collaboration and information sharing, improve the design of agricultural insurance policies, increase the synergistic dissemination of meteorological information and insurance knowledge, and optimize the network of agricultural insurance services, so as to enhance the resilience of agricultural production to climate change.