Theoretical background: Incorporating behavioral analysis into finance allows for finding responses to many questions that researchers have not been able to answer by relying on assumptions characteristic of the traditional, normative approach. One of the areas where recently the achievements of behavioral finance have been used to analyze selected problems is public finance. In this article, we use the achievements of psychology, incorporating them into public finance, which allows us to shed new light on decisions made by public managers in Poland. Purpose of the article:The aim of this paper is to present the reasons why local governments do not buy insurance that would protect them against potential losses resulting from the occurrence of a catastrophic event. In this paper, we rely on responses from 303 municipalities, following the premise that an obvious way to learn about motives, constraints, and the decision-making process is to ask decision-makers.

The paper examines whether Polish communes are willing to buy catastrophe insurance considering behavioural factors such as heuristics and biases. The core methods used in this contribution involve a survey among 348 Polish communes in 2020. The necessary empirical data of a qualitative nature was collected by a consortium of two research agencies, Biostat Research & Development Sp. z o.o. and Biostat Sp. z o.o. The research resultssupported the hypothesis that the levels of commune income do not have a decisive impact on decisions about the purchase of insurance against catastrophic losses by Polish communes, which allowed to emphasize the role of behavioural aspects of the decision-making process. The article extends the BDM area to municipalities.