Life insurance, loss aversion, and temporal orientation: a field experiment and replication with young adults

Young individuals rarely seek information about life insurance—a product that offers long-term benefits that might not motivate a desire to act now. Framing life insurance messaging as a gain in the present (e.g., “ensure your loved ones are protected today”) is thought to motivate younger individuals to seek information about insurance policies. A field experiment with a large life insurance issuer and a pre-registered experiment reveal that loss aversion and temporal orientation frames influences whether individuals aged 25–49 years shop for life insurance. Specifically, the results suggest that the superiority of gain frames over loss frames requires positioning the benefits well in the future, despite the need to act now. This study thus also contextualizes the realities and practical difficulty of framing financial products in ways that might interest a potentially vulnerable population.