Hunter risk sensitivity to ticks and tick-borne disease in Illinois

Abstract

ABSTRACT Tick-borne disease (TBD) is a public health issue, especially for hunters. Data were obtained from a mailed survey (n = 2,948, response rate = 59%) of Illinois adult resident hunters. Consistent with earlier work, hunter perception of vector-borne diseases could be categorized into an overall risk sensitivity index consisting of three clusters of respondents: no risk (40%), slight risk (45%), and moderate risk (15%). As predicted, individuals in the no-risk cluster consistently reported the lowest mean scores for the awareness of ticks, prior experience with ticks, perceived risks with ticks, and protective behavior indices. People in the moderate risk cluster reported the highest means on these indices. In contrast, means for those in the slight risk cluster were consistently between individuals in the no-risk and moderate risk clusters. Results underscore the need for identifying strategies to improve personal protective adoption measures by hunters with low-risk perception.