Assessing the Riskiness of Auto Drivers Through Psychological Factors
Open Access
- Author:
- Coleman, Alexis
- Area of Honors:
- Actuarial Science
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Andrew John Wiesner, Thesis Supervisor
Steven L Putterman, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Underwriting
Auto Insurance
Psychological Factors
Aggression
Actuarial Science
Statistics
Actuarial
Rating Factors
Traditional Underwriting - Abstract:
- Auto insurance underwriting is one of the most flexible types of underwriting in insurance, since the industry has more freedom over the characteristics it uses in the pricing of a participant’s auto insurance. Most auto insurers use seemingly disassociated factors, such as “good grades” for students, to help predict the number of accidents and total insurer liability certain policyholders will incur, and thus, how risky that policyholder is to the insurer. Other seemingly obscure characteristics about a person could prove beneficial to auto insurers. Thus, this study aims to determine the relationship between the psychological characteristic aggression and accident proneness. This thesis includes surveying and data analytics to test whether a policyholder’s psychological characteristics could be statistically significant in predicting one’s accident proneness. The hypothesis of this study was that there would be a positive correlation between the psychological factor aggression and the riskiness of college student auto-drivers in the United States. To test this hypothesis, 160 Penn State students or recent graduates successfully completed a short online, incentivized survey to collect demographic questions, driving history data, and psychological questions that ultimately address the level of aggression of survey participants based on the commonly referenced Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. The results of the survey indicated that there is a minor relationship between aggression and accident-proneness, but its additional impact when compared to traditional underwriting factors is indeterminate.