Does Insect Aversion Lead to Increased Household Pesticide Use?

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Domestic pesticides are commonly used for killing insect pests such as cockroaches and ants, despite the potential health risks associated with pesticide exposure, especially for young children. If feelings of fear and disgust toward insect pests are motivators that can encourage people to use more pesticides than they should, it may be worthwhile to try and mitigate such feelings in both children and adults, in order to lower current and future unnecessary exposure to domestic pesticides. Since there are no studies on the possible link between the common aversion to insects and domestic pesticide use, we tested the level of aversion and recorded pesticide use among volunteers. Surprisingly, we did not find such a connection, possibly due to other, more dominant factors that affect peoples’ decisions. We did, however, identify several other attributes such as fear of toxic chemicals, vegetarianism and infestation levels, which clearly affected pesticide use patterns. Our findings may be culture-specific and relevant to the population we sampled, but future studies that should be conducted in other societies may identify different motivations for using pesticides. Such insights may improve the efforts of public health authorities to lower the non-dietary exposure to pesticides in the home environment. ABSTRACT: In many human societies, domestic insect pests often evoke feelings of disgust, fear and aversion. These common feelings may translate to increased use of household pesticides. No study has ever explored this possibility and consequently, efforts to mitigate public exposure to domestic pesticides typically focus on addressing knowledge gaps. We tested the hypothesis that negative emotions toward insects may motivate people to use pesticides, by interviewing 70 participants and assessing their insect aversion levels using a computerized test. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found no effect of insect aversion on pesticide use. However, we did find that personal attributes and preferences such as wishing to avoid exposure to toxic chemicals, being vegetarian and taking frequent nature walks reduced pesticide use, in addition to low infestation levels and physical attributes of the housing unit. We emphasize the importance of conducting future studies in various societies, where insect aversion and other factors may have different effects on household pesticide use. Such studies may provide culture-specific insights that could foster the development of next-generation urban IPM (Integrated Pest Management) public education programs, which will address not only knowledge gaps, but also emotional aspects and personal attributes that lead to unnecessary or excessive use of household pesticides.