Business Interruption Insurance Adoption: A Behavioral Pathway to Agropreneurs’ Quality of Life

Abstract

Agropreneur face unique and complex challenges every day. The unpredictable commodity price, changing consumer trends and aggressive competition had limits on their profit margin. Without robust financial resilience, in the case of operational accidents or any incident can cause heavy financial loss and force business to close. The extreme personal stress and long-term financial difficulty lead to severe fatigue, burnout and declining mental health among them. To manage these vulnerabilities and enhance quality of life, agropreneur can employ different approach including financial strategy and risk management. Although Business Interruption Insurance (BII) is recognized as a strategic risk management mechanism for mitigating income losses during operational disruptions, its adoption among Malaysian agropreneur remains relatively low. Existing studies have predominantly examined personal, health, and life insurance, while empirical evidence on the behavioral drivers of Business Interruption Insurance adoption remains scarce, particularly within the agropreneur context. Adopting the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to investigate the effects of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on agropreneur' intention to purchase BII. Data were collected from 350 Malaysian agropreneur using a structured questionnaire and analysed through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The structural model explained 59.2% of the variance in purchase intention (R² = 0.592. The findings indicate that attitude (β = 0.458, p < 0.001) and perceived behavioural control (β = 0.336, p < 0.001) significantly influence agropreneurs' intention to purchase BII, whereas subjective norm (β = 0.082, p = 0.118) demonstrates non-significa nt effect. The study offers new insights into behavioural decision-making in business risk protection. The findings provide practical implications for insurers, agricultural agencies, and policymakers in designing targeted interventions to strengthen insurance participation, thereby enhancing agriculture business resilience, and the quality of life of agropreneurs. Beyond extending the Theory of Planned Behavior to an underexplored insurance context, the study demonstrates that strengthening Business Interruption Insurance adoption is not merely a financial protection strategy but a behavioural pathway towards business sustainability, financial resilience, and an improved quality of life among agropreneurs. The findings suggest that BII adoption is primarily driven by agropreneurs' personal evaluation of insurance benefits and their perceived capability to obtain protection rather than by social influence. The study extends the application of TPB to Business Interruption Insurance adoption within the agropreneurship context and provides practical insights for insurers and policymakers to strengthen business resilience, business sustainability, and ultimately improve the quality of life of agropreneurs.