Influence of Risk Communication on Livestock Biosecurity Protocol Adoption Across Two Gaming Platforms: Implications for Tactical and Operational Decision Making

With the increasing role of global markets and production chain specialization the livestock industry is facing increasing disease transmission risks that threatens economic livelihoods and public health and safety. This... [ view full abstract ]

With the increasing role of global markets and production chain specialization the livestock industry is facing increasing disease transmission risks that threatens economic livelihoods and public health and safety. This paper highlights the use of two distinct but interrelated gaming platforms to better understand how policies and incentives may be devised to increase biosecurity adoption rates across global supply chains of the swine industry.  A biosecurity protocol adoption game focuses on the tactical considerations that go into a livestock producer’s decision to adopt biosecurity protocols on their farms. A biosecurity compliance game focuses on the operational, farm level.    Similar risk communication messaging regarding disease threat and the biosecurity adoption rates of neighboring producers are tested in both tactical and operational games. In these games risk communication messages are used as treatments to study compliance practices around specific, simulated biosecurity practices.  Both games are calibrated to identical incentive designs and risk functions.  Comparable risk messaging is tested as well.  Participants are recruited from both Amazon mechanical turks (N=1000 players x 32 observations x 5 rounds = 160000 observations) and undergraduate students in a lab environment ((N= 100 players x 32 observations x 5 rounds = 16000 observations).  Comparisons across Amazon Turks and lab players are also drawn.

Results of behavioral experiments run on these two serious gaming platforms generate interesting principal agent decision making insights about biosecurity adoption at the tactical and operational levels of livestock production.  While most game theoretical, experimental design approaches have focused on abstracted public goods games that lack context and simulated real world settings, the serious gaming platforms highlighted here simulate real world settings, setting a stage for new a generation of behavioral research in public management and administration.  Secondly, game theoretical, public goods games have not distinguished between levels of agency across scales of management and decision making, meaning, differences between top down, managerial decision making occurring at the tactical level and more bottom up, operational levels decision making have yet to be made or compared.  In real world settings, context and incentives drive decisions.  In this study we test the hypothesis that messaging and incentives that drive tactical decision making made by principals will differ from the operational decision making made by agents.  At the tactical level, principals are left with a choice—in this case to choose whether to employ biosecurity protocols or not.  At the operational level, agents are left with the choice of whether to comply with the directives of principals.  By comparing results of experiments rendered at these two different levels, using identical pay-out and risk messaging treatments, we are able to determine how decision making to adopt differs from decision making to comply or defect.