2023 Kahramanmaraş depremlerinin deprem sigorta poliçesi satışına etkisi

On February 6, 2023, Türkiye was hit by two devastating earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş with magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 that occurred at short intervals on the same day. Despite several researches have been made revealing the relation between the earthquake and demand and willingness to purchase an earthquake insurance policy, the impact of the earthquakes on the earthquake insurance policy sales remains inadequate. Moreover, the literature mostly focuses on homeowners' purchases of earthquake insurance policies and does not pay as much attention to the buying behavior of businesses. To address these gaps in the literature, this paper examines the total earthquake insurance policy sales for homeowners and businesses for the periods of 3-month, 6-month and 12-month before and after the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes and investigates the impact of Kahramanmaraş earthquakes on the earthquake insurance policy sales. The results indicate that the earthquakes have a significant impact on the earthquake insurance sales to homeowners. The positive impact of the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes is found for the 3-month and 12-month time interval comparisons based on a firm-based secondary data. On the other hand, the results indicate that the impact of the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes on earthquake insurance policy sales for businesses is not statistically significant. Our research provides valuable insights to literature as well as the insurance firms by ensuring the right crisis management in the face of such a natural hazard.