Invited review: Examining farmers' personalities and attitudes as possible risk factors for dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and farm management: A systematic scoping review

Abstract

We aimed to determine how research regarding farmers' personalities and attitudes as risk factors is reported (methodological approaches to assessing, extracting, and processing data and analyzing risk factors) and to explore evidence for the effect of farmers' attitudes and personalities on dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and management. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of studies on personality and attitude as risk factors for dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and farm management. Database searches captured 1,144 records, and 38 were finally included in the review. Thirty-three manuscripts assessed farmers' attitudes, 1 assessed their personalities, and 4 assessed both as risk factors. These potential risk factors were checked for relationships with more than 50 different outcome variables regarding farm management (17 manuscripts), animal health (13 manuscripts), animal productivity (11 manuscripts), and animal welfare (4 manuscripts). The approaches to assessing risk factors and processing and interpreting data varied greatly; thus, drawing conclusions regarding the effects of attitude and personality as risk factors is impeded because manuscripts are difficult to compare. Our findings highlight the need for harmonization of attitudes and personality assessments in future research. Furthermore, researchers should carefully consider which depth of detail to apply when planning and evaluating related research. Nevertheless, results highlight the importance of the effect of personality and attitude on outcomes. Farmers' personality and attitudes are associated with dairy cattle health, welfare, productivity, and management. In general, attitudes indicating higher degrees of technical knowledge, affection with problems, perceived responsibility, perception of control of a situation, a better human-animal relationship, or a positive evaluation of the benefits of management decisions tended to affect outcomes in a beneficial way. "Agreeableness" and "conscientiousness" were shown to promote better farm performance, whereas "neuroticism" had a negative effect. Therefore, further research on attitude and personality and their consideration by professionals and decision-makers within the dairy sector and politics is strongly recommended. This might provide the chance to better understand the needs of dairy farmers and therefore develop tailored advice and support strategies to improve both satisfactory and constructive cooperation.

Factors that Influence Farmers’ Views on Farm Animal Welfare: A Semi-Systematic Review and Thematic Analysis

“…Ajzen [28,29] defined attitudes as being mediated through intention and as acting together with other explanatory factors, such as perceived control and subjective norm. They are designed to predict and explain human behavior in specific contexts (i.e., specific behaviors rather than aggregate behavior) [8,42,[49][50][51][52][53][54][55].…”

“…Farmers' knowledge, skills and abilities were amongst the most important factors that influenced the implementation of FAW innovation [9]. In a review by Adler et al, [8] higher degrees of technical knowledge were reported to influence farmers' perception of control and facilitate positive HAR. Furthermore, trained farmers [60] and farmers who understood the importance of their own actions [42] had lower risk of causing pain to livestock.…”

“…For example, 42% of the sheep farmers surveyed in UK did not know about the code of practice relating to the treatment of lame sheep [42,62]. Evidence suggests that farmers consistently underestimated FAW issues across livestock sectors and countries, this is exemplified by the underestimation of lameness in dairy cattle [8]. In the context of pig production, farmers' perception of aggression in growing pigs and their opinion about mitigation strategies to reduce the expression of this behavior showed that some farmers in Germany were unaware that provision of enrichment is a requirement of EU Council Directive 2008/120/EC to control tail biting [13].…”

“…To better explore these aspects, socio-psychological approaches have been implemented since the late eighties [7]. Interdisciplinary studies focusing on farmers' perceptions of FAW have reported that personalities [8], knowledge [9,10], values [11][12][13] economic advantages [9,13,14], communication with their veterinarian and agriculture advisors [10,15,16], time and management influence the perception of FAW.…”

Compost bedded-pack barn as an alternative housing system for dairy cattle in Italy: effects on animal health and welfare and milk and milk product quality

“…This last aspect has been extensively investigated in recent years, leading to mounting evidence that animals experience pain or distress from widely accepted management practices that subject them to being kept under apparently 'unnatural' conditions (Fraser 2008). Animal performance can also be indirectly influenced by management decisions that determine the conditions under which animals live (Adler et al 2019). The choice of environment for lactating dairy cows is therefore a key decision for dairy producers (Bewley et al 2017), especially because herd productivity and profitability may strictly depend on it (Villettaz Robichaud et al 2019).…”