Social Processes
Wiethoelter et al. (2017) reported that horse owners primarily sought
opinions of professionals about HeVD and considered their veterinarians
to be a valuable and trusted information source relative to governmental
or social media sources. However, media reports could also trigger
information seeking, and information sources were broad, including the
Internet, social media, word of mouth, and conversations with contacts
associated with horses, and veterinarians. In a survey directed at horse
owners who elected not to vaccinate their horses against HeVD
(Manyweathers, Field, Jordan, et al., 2017; Manyweathers, Field,
Longnecker, et al., 2017), most owners were not influenced by external
social processes; insurance and policy requirements (for example,
veterinarians’ refusal to treat unvaccinated horses), and
recommendations from veterinarians, medical doctors, industry peers, and
friends, were all unlikely to promote vaccine uptake. Horse owners could
also feel ignored or ostracized following adversarial conversations with
veterinarians, further undermining their trust in veterinarians,
manufacturers and regulators (Manyweathers et al. (2020).