Please cite this article in press as: Barnes, A.P., et al., The effect of animal health compensation on ‘positive’ behaviours towards exotic disease reporting and implementing biosecurity: A review, a synthesis and a research agenda. PREVET (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2015.09.003 ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model PREVET-3869; No. of Pages 11 Preventive Veterinary Medicine xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Preventive Veterinary Medicine journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/prevetmed The effect of animal health compensation on ‘positive’ behaviours towards exotic disease reporting and implementing biosecurity: A review, a synthesis and a research agenda Andrew Peter Barnes a , Andrew Paul Moxey b , Bouda Vosough Ahmadi a,* , Fiona Ann Borthwick a a Land Economy, Environment and Society Research Group, SRUC, West Mains Road, King’s Buildings, EH9 3JG Edinburgh, UK b Pareto Consulting, 29 Redford Avenue, EH13 0BX Edinburgh, UK a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 29 May 2015 Received in revised form 3 September 2015 Accepted 4 September 2015 Keywords: Compensation Behaviours Exotic diseases Biosecurity Nuffield ladder a b s t r a c t With an increasing burden on public sector budgets, increased responsibility and cost sharing mecha- nisms for animal diseases are being considered. To achieve this, fiscal and non-fiscal intervention policies need to be designed such that they consistently promote positive disease risk management practices by animal keepers. This paper presents a review of the available evidence towards whether and how the level and type of funding mechanism affects change within biosecurity behaviours and the frequency of disease reporting. A Nuffield Health Ladder of Interventions approach is proposed as a way to frame the debate surrounding both current compensation mechanisms and how it is expected to change behaviour. Results of the review reveal a division between economic modelling approaches, which implicitly assume a causal link between payments and positive behaviours, and socio-geographic approaches which tend to ignore the influence of compensation mechanisms on influencing behaviours. Generally, economic stud- ies suggest less than full compensation rates will encourage positive behaviours, but the non-economic literature indicate significant variation in response to compensation reflecting heterogeneity of livestock keepers in terms of their values, goals, risk attitudes, size of operation, animal species and production chain characteristics. This may be of encouragement to Western Governments seeking to shift cost bur- dens as it may induce greater targeting of non-fiscal mechanisms, or suggest more novel ways to augment current compensation mechanisms to both increase responsibility sharing and reduce this cost burden. This review suggests that a range of regulatory, fiscal and nudging policies are required to achieve socially optimal results with respect to positive behaviour change. However, the lack of directly available evi- dence which proves these causal links may hinder progress towards this optimal mixture of choice and non-choice based interventions. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction A series of high profile epidemics of exotic animal diseases including bluetongue, classical swine fever (CSF) and foot and mouth disease (FMD) have called into question current systems of animal disease prevention and control in Western Europe. The benefits of avoiding or better controlling such outbreaks are obvi- * Corresponding author at: Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), Edinburgh, UK. Fax: +44 131 535 4345. E-mail addresses: andrew.barnes@sruc.ac.uk (A.P. Barnes), apmoxey@pareto-consulting.co.uk (A.P. Moxey), bouda.v.ahmadi@sruc.ac.uk, boudava@gmail.com (B. Vosough Ahmadi), fiona.borthwick@sruc.ac.uk (F.A. Borthwick). ous and could offer substantial returns. Several enquiries (e.g. Anderson, 2002; Royal Society, 2002; Bourn, 2002) and related academic reviews (e.g. Donaldson et al., 2002; Taylor, 2003; Murphy-Lawless, 2004; Campbell and Lee 2003) have examined the experiences in detail in an effort to identify better ways to manage animal health. One of the key findings of these works has been that policies of compensation for both animal and production losses due to infectious diseases need to be re-designed in a way that consistently promotes positive disease risk management prac- tices, such as early reporting and notification of suspicious cases of contagious disease by animal keepers. This will provide the best return on investment for stakeholders. In addition, early detec- tion, diagnosis and notification of disease are considered by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) as critical to minimise http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2015.09.003 0167-5877/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.