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In recent years, the rapid development of e-commerce in China has reached 18.3 trillion in e-commerce transactions from 0.065 trillion yuan in 2000 to 2015, with an average annual growth rate of 49.61%. Logistics is an important part of e-commerce (Lee, 2001), the rapid development of electronic commerce providing opportunities for modern logistics industry development, logistics industry prosperity index (LPI) more than 50% all the year in China (Weina, 2015).But also brought new challenge to logistics industry at the same time, because the logistics industry belongs to high risk industry, the development of e-commerce accelerated the transportation of goods and increased risks in the process of logistics distribution. In case of loss due to natural disasters or accidents during transportation, the logistics enterprises need cargo insurance for transfer or spread risks. However, the China’s cargo insurance proportion of property insurance accounted decline year by year, from 7.63% in 1997 to 1.27% in 2014. Meanwhile, the cargo insurance depth has decreased from 4.2% in 1997 to 1.5% in 2014, has been a downward trend. The slow development of cargo insurance is difficult to protect the rapid development of e-commerce and logistics industry. It is worth discussing why there are problems such as insufficient demand for cargo insurance and slow development of cargo insurance due to the rapid development of e-commerce and logistics industry.
At present, there are many the literatures about the relationship between e-commerce and logistics. From the content, can be divided into two categories, first, logistics is an important part of e-commerce. The Typical scholar has James. Al, Haul Lee (2001), Fang Yan and Wu Zi, believed that logistics is an important part of e-commerce competition, and to implement e-commerce activities have a significant impact. Second, e-commerce and logistics depend on each other to promote each other. Reference pointed out that the logistics is not only the guarantee for e-commerce, but also the possibility of developing shackles Reference proposed that cost reduction and service level enhancement of logistics can promote expansion of e-commerce (Wei et al. 2007). Reference studied e-commerce and logistics are interdependent relationship, and concluded that e-commerce promote logistics informationization level, reduce logistics cost (Hui, 2008). Reference believed that the e-commerce can help the logistics to achieve information network, and promotes the development of logistics industry (Yuan, 2011).
From the above can be drawn that logistics and e-commerce are closely related. In order to meet the needs of the development of e-commerce, the logistics industry has gradually formed the modern logistics operation mode, such as small batch, multi-batch, high speed, JIT and others system. The integration, complexity and variability of these operational modes have led to the difficulty of controlling the entire transport process, and the freight risk is diversified. The logistics industry urgently needs cargo insurance to minimize the risk in transit. Although the academic and industry have listed the cargo insurance as the key point of current research and development, China’s cargo insurance development is not satisfactory, and the research on cargo insurance is in the preliminary stage. At present, there are two main viewpoints on the relationship between cargo insurance and logistics:
First view is cargo insurance promotes the development of logistics industry. Yuan Jingjing (2011) used the VAR model's impulse response function and variance decomposition method to prove the role of cargo insurance on the development of the logistics industry. Mi Junyi et al. (2015) used the structural equation model in 1997-2013 the panel data for empirical research, and empirical results show that the cargo insurance has significant impact on the development of modern logistics industry.