Tick Bite Risk as a Socio-Spatial Representation—An Exploratory Study in Massif Central, France

Sylvain Dernat,François Johany

doi:10.3390/land8030046

Abstract

Ticks are responsible for the largest number of transmissions of vector-borne diseases in the northern hemisphere, which makes the risk from tick bites a serious public health problem. Biological scientific research and prevention studies are important, but they have not focused on the population’s perception of tick bite risk, especially at a spatial level. This exploratory article sets out to study this point through an innovative methodology involving the collection of 133 mental maps associated with a semi-structured interview and a socio-demographic questionnaire collected in the Massif Central region, France. The results show a strong link between the representation of the tick bite risk and the representation of particular landscapes. Forests appear as dangerous for the population, especially in the traditional activities of family walking or hiking. This calls into question overly anxiogenic prevention approaches that neglect the impact on practices in risk-prone spaces. It accentuates the need for localized education measure to improve knowledge about tick biology and avoid stereotypical and unnecessary negative representations associated with the environment.

Highlights

The majority of vector-borne diseases in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere are due to acarines, mainly ticks
Wierzbicka et al [32] have confirmed that the prevalence of Lyme borreliosis in Central Europe is positively correlated with the use of forests by humans, and De Keukeleire et al [12,33] have shown that the accessibility to the forest and its distance from the home of an individual impacts the risk of exposure
This study constituted an initial empirical approach to validate the theoretical proposition, which addressed this perception as a social representation in a system conditioned in part by a spatial dimension

Summary

Introduction

The majority of vector-borne diseases in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere are due to acarines, mainly ticks. Tick-borne diseases are a major problem in industrialized countries and an emergent problem in less developed countries [3] They are the subject of abundant multidisciplinary scientific literature in cell biology, epidemiology, and the medical sciences, in the humanities and social sciences, publications remain more limited [4]. In a review of the literature, Mowbray et al [5] showed that the majority of articles focus on the study of prevention behaviors It appears that the knowledge of the risk related to ticks remains low in the population [6], most orientation is directed toward the socio-cognitive dimension associated with prevention behaviors, such as personal efficiency [6,7,8,9]

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Discussion

Conclusion