Managing Sustainable Use of Antibiotics - The Role of Trust

Since the overuse of antibiotics is coupled to behavior we need more knowledge on how to increase cooperation and attain behavioral change. Managing other sustainability and collective action dilemmas often require interpersonal trust between actors for them to voluntarily change behavior and lower their use. Antibiotics use is not different, individuals who trust other people in general state that they are more willing to voluntarily diminish their use of antibiotics. If people receive information on whether other people cooperate and abstain from using antibiotics it also makes them more willing to abstain from using antibiotics themselves. If these results can be reproduced outside Sweden in future studies, trust can be an important tool in managing sustainable use of antibiotics according to the CARe affiliates Felicia Robertson, Sverker C. Jagers and Björn Rönnerstrand in a recently published paper in Sustainability.

Reference to the study
Robertson, F., Jagers, S. C., & Rönnerstrand, B. (2018). Managing Sustainable Use of Antibiotics—The Role of Trust. Sustainability, 10(1), 143. doi:10.3390/su10010143.