The incidence of animal diseases in agricultural sector can increase costs and reduce profitability significantly. It can contribute to an increased in the farm’s vulnerability. Hence, disease surveillance system is an important part of diseases controlling. It’s included reporting the disease or events, analysing the data, responding to those events, and implementing measures aimed at prevention and control. The disease reporting is the first stage in disease surveillance system and subsequently induces other processes. It can lead to a major early detection and rapid response activity. Therefore, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) formally indicated that the OIE country members haver a duty to report their country’s animal disease situation in order to guarantee transparency and to improve knowledge of world animal health [1]. At a local level, farmers and livestock owners play an important role in reporting animal diseases. They confront with animal health closer than the veterinary. They can provide important data in which indicates the data on population and the area at risk to the authorities. It can then be used in animal disease surveillance system. Several types of disease surveillance, consist of passive and active surveillance [2]. After reporting stage, the passive surveillance is the system by which veterinary authorities obtaining the data on animal diseases. The veterinary authorities do not establish the specific objective and data collection system. They select only the relevant data for applying in animal disease surveillance system from their routine work, and the reports from farmers or other sources. For this reason, passive surveillance is an inexpensive and commonly used by the veterinary authorities. On the other hand, the active surveillance needs to be designed and conducted by the veterinary authorities with the specific objective of disease surveillance system. The system involves spending a great deal of time, labour, and budgetary resources [3, 4].
Participatory disease surveillance system and the PODD project
Participatory disease surveillance system is a type of active disease surveillance system that involves public health practitioners to provide health and disease data together. However, the participatory disease surveillance system is less expensive and more flexible than other types of active surveillance ones [3]. Moreover, it can also be conducted on a large scale, allowing for animal population-based monitoring at a low cost. For the participatory disease surveillance system, the key stakeholders are the community, who are willing to respond rapidly in sharing health data and who can provide insight data about health behaviour [5]. In addition, digital technology, particularly mobile phone devices such as smartphones, allows them to share the data faster [6].
In 2014, the Participatory One Health Disease Detection project, or PODD, was set up by the veterinary inspection authorities to test animal epidemic control systems using smartphone applications in Chiang Mai province[1], in collaboration with Chiang Mai University (CMU), the Skoll Global Threats Fund, and the Chiang Mai Provincial Livestock Office. The PODD project was a pilot project which involves various parties, i.e. digital technology, local government agencies, and community volunteers. A total of 296 volunteers from 74 local government agencies were involved in the project [7]. These volunteers play an important role in the PODD system by reporting abnormal animal sicknesses and deaths, animal diseases, animal bites, food safety issues, human diseases, and environmental problems via smartphones. However, to sustain the viability of the project, the volunteers need to be motivated in order to remain their commitments.
Motivation and participatory disease surveillance system
Motivation is important for the performance and success of participatory disease surveillance system. There are many explanations of motivation involve with this study. Maslow, in 1943, separated human needs into five levels that motivate individuals to achieve; physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs [8]. However, it is undeniable that today's utilization of money as a motivation is widespread. That is because we live in the age of market triumphalism, in which money can buy most of our desires [9]. For instance, the standard labour model of economics, human beings as labourers will offer their effort and time in exchange for compensation [10].
According to the standard labor model of economics, people work more for high wages and work less for low wages. In other words, if there is no payment, there is no effort. However, the overarching question is how should we do so? If we want to motivate participants in the participatory system of disease surveillance system. Is money the only effective motivation way, or is the non-monetary motivation way even more effective and sustainable? While the participatory system of disease surveillance has been developed, the outbreaks situation of diseases is quite high impact in the present. For example, in 2005, the zoonoses such as avian influenza affected on populations in Southeast Asia. Modeling research forecasts have predicted that between 2 to 7.4 million people worldwide could be infected and die in the next pandemic [11]. These forecasts have many implications for societies, including economic losses, human and animal health problems, and food insecurity. Regarding such pandemics, the future continues to be uncertain because vaccines for humans, such as those for influenza or avian influenza, are not yet ready for widespread use. That is because the candidate vaccines are still under development [12]. Therefore, we need not only better to have vaccines against viruses, but also own a rapid alert system for early detection. So that these issues can be dealt with by applying the controlling the pathogen spreading before causing a pandemic. However, surveillance system is an on-going activity that must be sustainable, so the PODD project encountered the issue of how to motivate volunteers, especially in the long term.
Theories of monetary and non-monetary incentives
In this study, we attempted to use the theory of monetary and non-monetary incentives to explain the short-term and long-term responses of participants. Monetary and non-monetary incentives are respectively called monetary markets and social markets [13], which is the theoretical framework of this study. This concept was derived from the Fiske’s relational models theory (1992). Fiske analysed human relationships by reviewing studies from various communities. The model categorizes human relationships into four models; communal sharing (CS), authority ranking (AR), equality matching (EM), and market pricing (MP). These four types of relationships are not only represent relationships in society as a whole, but also represent it in a social group or between individuals [14]. Heyman and Ariely’s study in 2004 reorganized the Fiske’s relational models by combining the CS, AR, and EM together. The combination was called social markets [13]. Only the MP was called monetary markets.
Under the social markets, people live in a well-balanced human relationship and focus on altruism. People give out their time and energy without expectation of return. If eventually there is some type of returns, it does not have to be immediate, nor does it have to be equal to the input of time or effort. For example, volunteer careers commit to care for the elderly without expecting anything in return. They frequently receive only gratitude instead. The social market is unclear and indirect which is contrast to the monetary market. People calculate the cost and benefits of every action, even the opportunity costs, which is the other option loss after one option is chosen. The return must be straightforward and clear without any ambiguity and should be dominated over cost. For instance, if an elderly person requires attention, hourly compensation must be paid. When the compensation is stopped, the provision of care ceases.
Previous researches demonstrated that when the social and monetary incentive must interact with each other, monetary incentives are more influential. It means that social incentives will disappear for a long time, and it is difficult to draw back to social incentives after money incentives are used [10,15, 16]. Therefore, using monetary incentives must be careful of the consequences, especially in the case of social activities that requires volunteer groups. It makes them compare their compensation to the normal wage rate and their expectation in which equal to the amount of compensation [17]. Moreover, monetary incentive can reduce effort after the compensation are terminated [18, 19]. In addition, pushing people to monetary incentive can be done easily by making them thinking about money even though there are no real payment [20]. Therefore, compensation payment is enough to shift volunteers from the social incentive to the monetary incentive.
As the results of reviewing the literature, the main objective of this study is to compare and describe the effect of monetary and social incentives on participants’ efforts during the course of the study. The specific objectives could be identified as follows;
- Objective 1: To compare and describe the effects of monetary and social incentives during the period when compensation is paid.
- Objective 2: To compare and describe the effects of monetary and social incentives at the end of the payment period.
- Objective 3: To compare and describe the effects of monetary and social incentives in the long term after the compensation was terminated.
Footnote:
[1] Chiang Mai province is in northern Thailand; population 1.7 million, area: 20,107 km2, density: 83.93 km2