Perceived risk, expected benefits and pig farmers’ behaviors of veterinary drug usage

Abstract

To guarantee the pork quality and safety and the steady development of the pig-breeding industry in China, it is important to control veterinary drugs usage in the pig farming sector. In order to develop an effective intervention that control veterinary drug usage, it is important to perform an in-depth analysis of those factors that can affect the standardized use of veterinary drugs in the pig-breeding process. In this paper, hierarchical regression analysis is used to examine how perceived risk, expected benefits, and self-efficacy influence on the standardized use of veterinary drugs. Data were collected using a multi-stage sampling method from four provinces in China. The results show that expected benefit and self-efficacy have positive impacts on the standardized use of veterinary drugs. Self-efficacy significantly moderated the positive relationships between expected benefits and the negative relationships between perceived risk and standardized use of veterinary drugs.