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).