Can Machine Learning discover the determining factors in participation in insurance schemes? A comparative analysis

Abstract: Identifying factors that affect participation is key to a successful insurance scheme. This study's challenges involve using many factors that could affect insurance participation to make a better forecast.Huge numbers of factors affect participation, making evaluation difficult. These interrelated factors can mask the influence on adhesion predictions, making them misleading.This study evaluated how 66 common characteristics affect insurance participation choices. We relied on individual farm data from FADN from 2016 to 2019 with type 1 (Fieldcrops) farming with 10,926 observations.We use three Machine Learning (ML) approaches (LASSO, Boosting, Random Forest) compare them to the GLM model used in insurance modelling. ML methodologies can use a large set of information efficiently by performing the variable selection. A highly accurate parsimonious model helps us understand the factors affecting insurance participation and design better products.ML predicts fairly well despite the complexity of insurance participation problem. Our results suggest Boosting performs better than the other two ML tools using a smaller set of regressors. The proposed ML tools identify which variables explain participation choice. This information includes the number of cases in which single variables are selected and their relative importance in affecting participation.Focusing on the subset of information that best explains insurance participation could reduce the cost of designing insurance schemes.