Abstract
BackgroundThe extensive research on community members’ willingness to support malaria interventions ignores the role of psychosocial determinants. This study assesses the impact of individuals’ sense of community (perceptions of community cohesion, altruism, seeking help from neighbours and migrant status) on their willingness to participate in a mosquito control programme using data on 768 individuals from the 2013 RIPS Urban Health and Poverty Survey in poor coastal communities in Accra, Ghana. A contingent valuation experiment was employed to elicit individuals’ willingness to support the programme by contributing nothing, labour time/money only or both.ResultsFindings show that different dimensions of sense of community related differently with willingness to support the programme. Perceived community cohesion was associated with lower odds while help-seeking from neighbours and being a migrant were associated with higher odds of supporting the programme. Altruism was the only dimension not linked to willingness to participate.ConclusionsDifferent dimensions of sense of community are associated with community members’ willingness to provide labour, time or both to support the malaria eradication programme. The findings of this study have implications for targeting social relational aspects, in addition to geographical aspects, of communities with malaria-resilient policy and intervention. They also warrant further research on psychosocial factors that predict willingness to support health programmes in urban poor settings.
Highlights
The extensive research on community members’ willingness to support malaria interventions ignores the role of psychosocial determinants
A small proportion (10.9%) of respondents stated that they would contribute neither time nor money, yet, close to half of all the respondents indicated willingness to contribute to both money and time (46.7%) to the proposed community-based malaria intervention
Majority of the respondents were from Ussher Town (60%) while the lowest proportion was from Agbogbloshie
Summary
The extensive research on community members’ willingness to support malaria interventions ignores the role of psychosocial determinants. Malaria is a parasitic disease epidemic that recurrently confronts populations in sub-Saharan Africa. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), under its high confidence projections, indicates an increase in climate-related infectious diseases due to rising temperatures and rainfall variability (IPCC [1]). Social resilience to diseases through robust health systems, access to resources and community agency, provides communities adequate capacity to respond to epidemics [13]. Community members may demonstrate altruistic willingness to pay for intervention schemes which eventually benefit the poor in those communities [11, 14]
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