The impact of the epidemic experience on the recovery of production of pig farmers after the outbreak-Evidence from the impact of African swine fever (ASF) in Chinese pig farming

Prev Vet Med. 2022 Feb:199:105568. doi: 10.1016/j.prevetmed.2022.105568. Epub 2022 Jan 5.

Abstract

The African swine fever (ASF) has triggered considerable shocks to the pig farming industry, which has become a significant animal disease epidemic. The study explores the effect of epidemic experience on post-outbreak production recovery from resilience and risk perception based on 340 micro-survey data from Sichuan, Henan, and Shandong provinces. Epidemic experience has been shown to impact the degree of post-outbreak production recovery positively, and farmers who have endured epidemics are more likely to recover their production after outbreaks. The mechanistic study indicates that past epidemics in African swine fever shocks can effectively improve farmers' cognitive resilience and management capability, enhance recovery, and reduce risk perception in the aftermath of production recovery. In order to alleviate the endogenous problems caused by selection bias, missing variables, and two-way causality. This paper uses factor analysis to comprehensively measure production recovery capacity and production risk perception, and uses propensity score matching(PSM), instrumental variable method and replacement measurement methods to conduct robustness tests, and find the conclusions are still robust. The empirical analysis shows that the experience of the epidemic will promote the recovery of farmers after the outbreak; the experience of the epidemic will significantly impact the recovery of production after the outbreak for both free-range and professional farmers.

Keywords: Epidemic experience; Farmers; Production recovery ability; Production risk perception.

MeSH terms

  • African Swine Fever Virus*
  • African Swine Fever* / epidemiology
  • African Swine Fever* / prevention & control
  • Animal Husbandry
  • Animals
  • China / epidemiology
  • Disease Outbreaks / veterinary
  • Epidemics* / veterinary
  • Farmers
  • Humans
  • Swine
  • Swine Diseases*