Perceived competence, threat severity and response efficacy: key drivers of intention for area wide management

Abstract

Area wide management (AWM) is a coordinated strategy designed to achieve effective and longer-lasting suppression of mobile insect pests, involving groups of commercial growers working together and/or with local communities to achieve control across multiple host areas. In this study, we hypothesised that intentions to carry out AWM for the control of fruit fly would be predicted by subjective knowledge of insect pests, along with protection motivation factors (perceived pest threat severity, threat vulnerability, self-efficacy, AWM response efficacy and response costs). Fruit and vegetable growers (n = 131) and general public (n = 896) living in fruit-growing regions completed a large-scale telephone survey, measuring perceptions and intentions to implement area wide management. Regression analyses tested the relationship between intention, protection motivation factors and subjective knowledge, F(8, 1018) = 48.52, p < .001, yielding a statistically significant predictive model accounting for approximately 30% of behavioural variance in intention. Self-efficacy, threat severity, response efficacy and threat vulnerability were the most influential predictors of intention. Subjective knowledge was not a strong predictor, but results did clarify that explicit knowledge of fruit fly controls, rather than tacit knowledge of fruit fly itself, was a significant predictor of intention. Understanding motivational drivers for farmer and community engagement in pest management can not only help predict uptake of novel practices, but also allude to how individual farmers and communities are articulating a pest problem. The importance of explanatory factors such as threat appraisal and self-efficacy in framing management activities can help to better target behavioural incentives.