  Livestock industries are vulnerable to disease threats, which can cost
billions of dollars and have substantial negative social ramifications. Losses
are mitigated through increased use of disease-related biosecurity practices,
making increased biosecurity an industry goal. Currently, there is no
industry-wide standard for sharing information about disease incidence or
on-site biosecurity strategies, resulting in uncertainty regarding disease
prevalence and biosecurity strategies employed by industry stakeholders. Using
an experimental simulation game, we examined human participant's willingness to
invest in biosecurity when confronted with disease outbreak scenarios. We
varied the scenarios by changing the information provided about 1) disease
incidence and 2) biosecurity strategy or response by production facilities to
the threat of disease. Here we show that willingness to invest in biosecurity
increases with increased information about disease incidence, but decreases
with increased information about biosecurity practices used by nearby
facilities. Thus, the type or context of the uncertainty confronting the
decision maker may be a major factor influencing behavior. Our findings suggest
that policies and practices that encourage greater sharing of disease incidence
information should have the greatest benefit for protecting herd health.
