Abstract
Studies of farmers' failure to implement biosecurity practices frequently frame their behavior as a lack of intention. More recent studies have argued that farmers' behaviors should be conceptualized as emergent from farming experiences rather than a direct consequence of specific intentions. Drawing on the concepts of “cowshed” culture and the “Trigger Change Model,” we explore how farmers' livestock purchasing behavior is shaped by farms' natural and physical environments and identify what triggers behavioral change amongst farmers. Using bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in New Zealand as a case example, qualitative research was conducted with 15 New Zealand dairy producers with varying bTB experiences. We show how farmers' livestock purchasing behavior evolve with culture under a given farm environment. However, established cultures may be disrupted by various triggers such as disease outbreaks, introductions of animals with undesired characteristics, and farm relocation. While dealing with economic and socio-emotional impacts posed by triggers, farmers reorganize their culture and trading behaviors, which may involve holistic biosecurity strategies. Nevertheless, we also show that these triggers instigate only small behavioral changes for some farmers, suggesting the role of the trigger is likely to be context-dependent. Using voluntary disease control schemes such as providing disease status of source farms has attracted great interest as a driver of behavioral change. One hopes such schemes are easily integrated into existing farm practices, however, we speculate such an integration is challenging for many farmers due to path-dependency. We therefore argue that these schemes may fail to bring their intended behavioral changes without a greater understanding of how different types of triggers work in different situations. We need a paradigm shift in how we frame farmers' livestock trading practices. Otherwise, we may not able to answer our questions about farm biosecurity if we continue to approaching these questions solely from a biosecurity point of view.
Highlights
Theoretical and empirical research studies have shown that farmers’ practices play a substantial role in determining how livestock diseases spread within and between farms [1,2,3,4]
We demonstrated while some trigger events resulted in a major change in farmers’ behaviors, similar events only induced a minor change in other circumstances
Farmers’ behavioral response to disease-related events or information likely depends on the disease characteristics, and on a wider range of factors associated with farm circumstance and culture, and livestock trading systems
Summary
Theoretical and empirical research studies have shown that farmers’ practices play a substantial role in determining how livestock diseases spread within and between farms [1,2,3,4]. Farmers’ livestock trading behavior can be responsible for the geographical spread or translocation of disease [5, 6]. Previous studies have suggested that regional or national-level livestock movement patterns are sensitive to externalities such as an imposition of new legislation and changes in global milk prices [4, 7,8,9]. Despite epidemiologists’ use of social network analysis to understand the temporal and spatial variability of movement patterns [10], there is surprisingly little research that seeks to understand how and why individual farmers make livestock trading decisions [11].
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