Configurations of the driving factors promoting China's commercial health insurance: A comparative qualitative analysis based on the technology-organization-environment framework

Heliyon. 2022 Nov 11;8(11):e11522. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e11522. eCollection 2022 Nov.

Abstract

With the nation's remarkable improvement in living standards, China's health insurance system cannot satisfy people's higher demands; therefore, it is necessary to promote the supply of commercial health insurance (CHI) in China. Based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, this study constructs a novel analysis framework to investigate the driving path of China's CHI. Employing the data of 31 provincial regions of China in 2018, a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is conducted to analyze configurations. We also adopt a necessary condition analysis in the robustness check to examine the necessary conditions, determining that no necessary relationship exists between possible conditions and the performance of CHI. More particularly, three sufficient configurations, TOE strategy, government attention (GA)-environment adaptability (EA)-citizen demand (CD) strategy, and dual EA-CD strategy are demonstrated to achieve high performance, and the other three configurations of technological management capability (TMC)-EA-CD strategy, technological infrastructure (TI)-EA strategy, and combined TI-TMC-EA strategy do not result in high performance. In addition, technological conditions (TI and TMC) and EA are relatively more important than the other configurations. Notably, government departments' financial expenditure is found to have a negative effect on CHI promotion.

Keywords: Commercial health insurance; Configuration; Qualitative comparative analysis; Technology–organization–environment framework.