O-2089

To mitigate emerging anthelmintic resistance in cattle, sustainable worm control strategies should be adopted, such as the use of diagnostic methods to take informed treatment decisions. To understand the factors affecting European farmers’ intention to adopt diagnostic methods and to gauge for differences between European regions, a theoretical framework, based on theories in the field of behavioural psychology and health psychology, was validated through a questionnaire survey, carried out in dairy farms in 6 European countries. Despite insufficient data from 2 countries and several confounders prohibiting statistical comparisons between countries, three models were developed, which allowed to describe general trends and differences between regions. Data from Northern-(Norway) and Central-Europe (Austria and Germany) resulted in two similar models, which differed in 3 questions. Southern Europe’s (Italy) data were more difficult to align with the conceptual model and several factors were deleted to fit the model. In all models, subjective norms, affected by a bandwagon bias, had the largest influence on farmers’ adoption intention. Perception of anthelmintic resistance had no effect on adoption intention for Northern and Central, but to some extent for Southern Europe. In Northern and Central Europe, attitude towards anthelmintics had a negative effect on adoption intention, while attitude towards diagnostics had a positive effect. Both types of attitudes were affected by the default bias. Finally, by combining self-reported practices for Northern and Central Europe, a larger effect of descriptive norms on farmers’ actual adoption of diagnostics was observed, compared to adoption intention and the default bias. COST EU info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion