Objective  To examine willingness and associates of participating in long-term care insurance (LTCI) among urban residents in Nanjing city for providing references to establish and improve LTCI system.

  Methods  Using convenient sampling, we recruited 1 700 adult residents (18 – 79 years old) in an urban community of Nanjing city and conducted a questionnaire survey from October 2017 to April 2018. Univariate statistics and binary logistic regression analysis were adopted to analyze influencing factors of willingness of LTCI participation.

  Results  Of the 1 532 residents (mean age of 54.52 ± 15.72 years, 48.56% and 51.44% being male and female) with valid informantion, 45.17% reported the willingness to participate in LTCI. The results of binary logistic regression analysis revealed that the participants with following characteristics were more likely to have the willingness to participate in LTCI: having the education equal to or higher than junior high school (odd ratio OR = 2.286, 95% confidence interval CI: 1.335 – 3.912) or graduate (OR = 3.205, 95% CI: 1.812 – 5.667), with a high annual medical expenses (OR = 3.278, 95% CI: 1.845 – 5.823), and being aware of LTCI (OR = 2.378, 95% CI: 1.798 – 3.146); while the participants being female (OR = 0.794, 95% CI: 0.634 – 0.993), aged 40 – 59 years (OR = 0.450, 95% CI: 0.244 – 0.828), and being widowed (OR = 0.453, 95% CI: 0.233 – 0.881) were less likely to have the willingness.

  Conclusion  Both the awareness and willingness of participating in long-term care insurance are at a low level and the willingness is influenced mainly by gender, education, marital status, annual medical expenses, and related awareness among urban adult residents in Nanjing city.