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Vietnam is one of the countries most affected by floods. Despite high
exposure to this risk and repeated calls from international organizations, the penetration
rate of flood insurance remains surprisingly low in Vietnam. We investigate
if there is a demand for flood insurance by Vietnamese households using a choice
experiment. We compute households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for various flood
insurance programs and we identify the relationships between WTP and the different
attributes of insurance schemes (type of risk covered, level of coverage,
insurance provider, billing frequency, insurance premium). We first show that
Vietnamese households exhibit a strong preference for the status quo option (no
insurance). We do, however, document significant and positive WTP for some flood
insurance policies, especially those covering health expenses. We show that
household trust in institutions providing flood insurance policies may help understand
the currently low adoption rate. Finally, we stress the high degree of
heterogeneity in household preferences for flood insurance policies: past experience
with flooding, individual risk preferences and subjective flood risk perception matter
to understand WTP for flood insurance. These results call for a very careful design