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Motivation of dairy farmers to engage in primary prevention: current situation, drivers, and perceived constraints
Stok, M.; Swinkels, J.; Lahaye, N...
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Objective: While bovine veterinary medicine was traditionally focused on treatment of diseased animals, disease prevention is currently generally accepted as the preferred strategy, as this approach is favorable for animal welfare, highly appreciated by the general public, and also economically attractive for farmers. Instead of allowing diseases to occur and prevent it from getting worse (tertiary prevention), or to prevent it from re-occurring in the future (secondary prevention), primary prevention, is implemented before the occurrence of any clinical or subclinical disease. Despite the benefits of primary disease prevention, it remains challenging for many veterinarians to convince farmers to focus on it. This study was designed to explore underlying psychological constructs to be able to understand why farmers do or do not (yet) engage in primary preventative practices. Such underlying factors can both facilitate and hinder the performance of primary prevention practices.
Materials & Methods: We conducted an online survey in 15 Dutch veterinary practices. We used three established frameworks in our study: the Transtheoretical model, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and the Capabilities-Opportunities-Motivation-Behavior model.
The survey included close-ended questions probing the relevant psychological constructs from the three guiding frameworks, open-ended questions to allow respondents to provide additional in-depth information about either claw or calf health, and questions about specific preventative behaviors. Responding farmers were randomly assigned to questions on the prevention of claw or calf diseases. For claw health, the explored specific behaviors were keeping floors dry and clean; preventive claw trimming; and preventing overcrowding – for calf health, these specific behaviors were feeding colostrum within 2 hours after birth; using a separate maternity unit; and cleaning the calf hutches after every use.
Results: Respondents were 226 dairy farmers: 111 were assigned to questions on the primary prevention of claw disease, while the remaining 115 completed questions on the prevention of calf disease.
Most dairy farmers appeared to be in the action and maintenance stages of change, with about 70% already engaging in primary preventative behavior regarding claw or calf health. In addition, dairy farmers viewed preventative behaviors in general highly favorably and were highly motivated to perform primary preventative behaviors. Together, this shows a strong willingness to engage in primary prevention to promote claw and calf health among the target group. Results also indicated that there are factors which hamper farmers’ ability to consistently engage in all targeted behaviors. These were, primarily, the limited importance of unsupported social norms (i.e. seeing other farmers engage in preventative behaviors and feeling like performing preventative behaviors is supported by others), confined available resources (i.e. time, equipment, facilities), and low habitualness of the behavior (the extent to which a behavior is engrained and performed almost automatically). These are thus important factors to target with tailored interventions, since improving upon them is likely to lead to increased preventative behavior.
Conclusion: We found that participating farmers had a strong willingness to engage in primary prevention, which could be supported by increased the importance of social norms, available resources, and engraining of preventive behavior.
Keywords: Drivers, constraints, primary prevention, dairy farmers.
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Affiliation of the authors at the time of publication
Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands; 2MSD Animal Health, Boxmeer, Netherlands
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