A Study of the Middle Aged and Senior People’s Decision Making Behaviors Regarding Their Lifetime Contracts

• Main Authors: Su-Mean Chen, 陳素敏
• Other Authors: 陳燕禎
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93092866788459365541

碩士 === 元智大學 === 社會暨政策科學學系 === 99 === In 2002, the “Statute for Funeral and Burial Management” was approved. Nowadays, the market share of lifetime contracts is about5%, meaning that the concept of making funeral arrangement during lifetime is not popular among people yet. This study aims to explore middle-aged and senior people’s changes caused by their decision making behaviors regarding arrangements of their lifetime contracts. The differences and similarities in subjective personal qualities, mental perception, social communication, and cultural traditions are described respectively for those who accept lifetime contracts and those who don’t. The in-depth interview method for qualitative researches was applied in this study. First-handed in-depth data were collected with a total of 35 people interviewed successfully. The people participated in the study included the middle-aged and the senior, their important others, lifetime contract sale-persons, and funeral service providers. According to their decision making behaviors regarding arrangements of lifetime contracts, middle-aged and senior people were categorized into the practical group, the accepting group, the waiting-and-seeing group, and the rejecting group. The reasons or factors behind middle-aged and senior people’s acceptance of their lifetime contracts included: social responsibility, benefits for children, motivation for the purchase, facing death with open-mindedness, trust and friendship, aggressiveness and activeness, reciprocal communication, expectable costs, 24-hour electronized service, and the disappearing concept of “raising sons to support one in one''s old age”. The reasons or factors behind middle-aged and senior people’s rejection included: religion, no need to make arrangement in advance, risk investment, demonology, sale of columbarium, lacking of confidence in contract execution, family influence, expecting the funeral markets to be more competitively transparent, “bad luck”, and conventional requirements. There are two suggestions for the further study. First, for the lifetime contract providers, it is suggested that middle-aged and senior people’s current doubts be dispelled. The corresponding strategies for the funeral markets could be adopted to help to increase their willingness to make arrangements of lifetime contracts. Second, for middle-aged and senior people, it is suggested that they should actively make their funeral arrangements, and the death issues could be extended to make arrangements to help the dead rest in peace and the living leave no regrets.