title: A One Health Message about Bats Increases Intentions to Follow Public Health Guidance on Bat Rabies.
abstract: Since 1960, bat rabies variants have become the greatest source of human rabies deaths in the United States. Improving rabies awareness and preventing human exposure to rabid bats remains a national public health priority today. Concurrently, conservation of bats and the ecosystem benefits they provide is of increasing importance due to declining populations of many bat species. This study used a visitor-intercept experiment (N = 521) in two U.S. national parks where human and bat interactions occur on an occasional basis to examine the relative persuasiveness of four messages differing in the provision of benefit and uncertainty information on intentions to adopt a rabies exposure prevention behavior. We found that acknowledging benefits of bats in a risk message led to greater intentions to adopt the recommended rabies exposure prevention behavior without unnecessarily stigmatizing bats. These results signify the importance of communicating benefits of bats in bat rabies prevention messages to benefit both human and wildlife health.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Hang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Katherine A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: McComas
authors.affiliation: Wildlife Health Branch, Biological Resources Division, National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America.
authors.forename: Danielle E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Buttke
authors.affiliation: Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Sungjong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Roh
authors.affiliation: Wildlife Health Branch, Biological Resources Division, National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America.
authors.forename: Margaret A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Wild
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D000835:Animals, Wild; D002685:Chiroptera / Q000821:virology*; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011634:Public Health; D011818:Rabies / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission / Q000662:veterinary; D011897:Random Allocation; D014481:United States