A Long-Term Negative Effect of Monetary Incentives On Participatory Surveillance of Animal Disease

Abstract

Background Generally animal diseases affect widely on human health, therefore practical animal diseases surveillance system is important controlling system to motivate participants in the long term. The objective of this study is to determine the effect of monetary and social motivation on the participatory surveillance of animal diseases. Based on the Fiske’s relational theory (1992), we proposed that there were basically two types of motivation; monetary incentives (monetary markets) and non-monetary incentives (social markets). Our hypothesis is that the effort by monetary motivation is higher than the efforts by social motivation during the payment period. This effort decreases at the end of the payment period, whereas the effort by social motivation is stable. Methods We analyzed the data generated by a pilot project that started in 2014 by using a smartphone application to report on the symptoms that indicate animal health malfunctions in Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand. This experiment involved the participation of 67 volunteers from 17 areas in the central part of the province. Results The results of the experiment demonstrated that monetary motivation was more effective during the payment period. However, after the termination of the payment period, the social motivation group was more effective. The volunteers given monetary motivation demonstrated not only lower effort than those given social motivation, but the group with monetary motivation was also not re-motivated immediately by social motivation after the payment period had terminated. Conclusions In the long run, the social motivation was more efficient and sustainable than the monetary motivation.