Incorporating heterogeneity in farmer disease control behaviour into a livestock disease transmission model

Abstract

Human behaviour is critical to effective responses to livestock disease outbreaks, especially with respect to vaccination uptake. Traditionally, mathematical models used to inform this behaviour have not taken heterogeneity in farmer behaviour into account. We address this by exploring how heterogeneity in farmers vaccination behaviour can be incorporated to inform mathematical models. We developed and used a graphical user interface to elicit farmers (n = 60) vaccination decisions to an unfolding epidemic and linked this to their psychosocial and behavioural profiles. We identified, via cluster analysis, robust patterns of heterogeneity in vaccination behaviour. By incorporating these groupings into a mathematical livestock disease model, we explored how heterogeneity in behaviour impacts epidemiological outcomes. When assuming homogeneity in farmer behaviour versus configurations informed by the psychosocial profile cluster estimates, the modelled scenarios revealed a disconnect in projected distributions and threshold statistics across outbreak size, outbreak duration and health economic measures.