Learning and strategic imitation in modelling farmers’ dynamic decisions on bovine viral diarrhoea vaccination

Considering human decision-making is essential for understanding the mechanisms underlying the propagation of real-life diseases. We present an extension of a model for pathogen spread that considers farmers’ dynamic decision-making regarding the adoption of a control measure in their own herd. Farmers can take into account the decisions and observed costs of their trade partners or of their geographic neighbours. The model and construction of such costs are adapted to the case of bovine viral diarrhoea, for which an individual-based stochastic model is considered. Simulation results suggest that obtaining information from geographic neighbours might lead to a better control of bovine viral diarrhoea than considering information from trade partners. In particular, using information from all geographic neighbours at each decision time seems to be more beneficial than considering only the information from one geographic neighbour or trade partner at each time. This study highlights the central role that social dynamics among farmers can take in the spread and control of bovine viral diarrhoea, providing insights into how public policy efforts could be targeted in order to increase voluntary vaccination uptake against this disease in endemic areas. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13567-022-01112-2.