In order to scale up micro-insurance products to cover larger numbers of poor people, it is crucial to understand why people do or do not take up insurance products when offered. An often mentioned constraint in selling insurance to poor households is a lack of trust in insurance providers. This study aims at establishing a causal measure of the effect of trust on people’s take-up decisions, and explore the best instruments and mechanisms to build trust, through a series of randomized experiments which will be implemented within the context of an innovative area-based yield rice insurance contract offered to farmers in the rural areas by People’s Insurance Company of China.
