Community involvement and the preventive behavior of households are considered to be at the heart of vector-control strategies. In this work, we consider a simple theoretical model that enables us to take into account human behaviors that may interfere with vector control. The model reflects the trade-off between perceived costs and observed efficacy. Our theoretical results emphasize that households may reduce their protective behavior in response to mechanical elimination techniques piloted by a public agent, leading to an increase of the total number of mosquitoes in the surrounding environment and generating a barrier for vector-borne diseases control. Our study is sufficiently generic to be applied to different arboviral diseases. It also shows that vector-control models and strategies have to take into account human behaviors.
@article{arxiv.1510.06796,
title = {Human behaviors: a threat for mosquito control?},
author = {Y. Dumont and J. Thuilliez},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.06796},
year = {2016}
}