Study on the influencing factors of fishery producers' willingness to participate in aquaculture insurance--based on the perspective of subjective norms and risk perception

The development of aquaculture is an important way to ensure the diversification of China's food supply and food safety. As a market-oriented risk management tool, aquaculture insurance plays a vital role in enhancing the risk resistance of China's aquaculture industry and promoting its high-quality development. Although there has been some discussion on aquaculture insurance in existing studies, there is still a lack of research on the influencing factors of fishery producers' willingness to participate in aquaculture insurance. In order to better understand the intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting fishery producers' participation in aquaculture insurance, in this paper, based on the Theory of Reasoned Action and from the perspectives of external subjective norms and internal risk perceptions, we thoroughly investigate the effects and mechanism of subjective norms and risk perceptions on the willingness of fishery producers to participate in aquaculture insurance, and we further explore the moderating effect of insurance cognition in this relationship, and construct a corresponding theoretical model. By empirically analyzing the sample data of 238 fishery producers in the Yangtze River Delta region, we find that injunctive norms, descriptive norms and risk perception have positive effects on fishery producers' willingness to participate in aquaculture insurance, with descriptive norms having the most significant impact. In addition, insurance cognition positively moderated the effects of subjective norms and risk perception on fishery producers' willingness to participate in aquaculture insurance, and the moderating effect on risk perception and fishery producers' willingness to participate in aquaculture insurance was the most obvious. Based on the above findings, we put forward a series of targeted recommendations, including strengthening the publicity of aquaculture insurance, providing diversified and targeted aquaculture insurance subsidies, constructing grassroots service stations for aquaculture insurance, and strengthening the training of professional knowledge in aquaculture insurance, etc. The above recommendations are intended to provide a scientific theoretical basis and decision-making reference for the high-quality development of the aquaculture industry.