  Failing to mitigate propagation of disease spread can result in dire economic
consequences for agricultural networks. Pathogens like Porcine Epidemic
Diarrhea virus, can quickly spread among producers. Biosecurity is designed to
prevent infection transmission. When considering biosecurity investments,
management must balance the cost of protection versus the consequences of
contracting an infection. Thus, an examination of the decision making processes
associated with investment in biosecurity is important for enhancing system
wide biosecurity. Data gathered from digital field experiments can provide
insights into behavioral strategies and inform the development of decision
support systems. We created an online digital experiment to simulate outbreak
scenarios among swine production supply chains, where participants were tasked
with making biosecurity investment decisions. In Experiment One, we quantified
the risk associated with each participant's decisions and delineated three
dominant categories of risk attitudes: risk averse, risk tolerant, and
opportunistic. Each risk class exhibited unique approaches in reaction to risk
and disease information. We also tested how information uncertainty affects
risk aversion, by varying the amount of visibility of the infection as well as
the amount of biosecurity implemented across the system. We found evidence that
more visibility in the number of infected sites increases risk averse
behaviors, while more visibility in the amount of neighboring biosecurity
increased risk taking behaviors. In Experiment Two, we were surprised to find
no evidence for differences in behavior of livestock specialists compared to
Amazon Mechanical Turk participants. Our findings provide support for using
digital field experiments to study how risk communication affects behavior,
which can provide insights towards more effective messaging strategies.
