This project designed with Emmanuelle Augeraud-Véron takes the above-mentioned EMERGENCE project to another level by building a truly interdisciplinary team (medecine, microbiology, epidemiology and economics) from France and Sweden to contribute to more efficient public health policies against emerging tick-borne diseases. 

A better understanding of individual preferences for tick risk in French will be elicited through a Discrete Choice Experiment and cross-examined with data on local Lyme disease prevalence and tick abondance. 

The economic burden of Lyme disease in France will be assessed thanks to original data from medical practitioners.  

In relation with the project on Lyme disease below, the TOR Grant from the Institut Français de Suède offered me the opportunity of a one week research stay at the Departement of Economics with Public Health Economists experts in tick-borne diseases Daniel Slunge and Anders Boman. 

This project carried out with Emmanuelle Augeraud-Véron (Bordeaux School of Economics) looked at the self-protection behaviours of forest users through an economic approach integrating the essential constructs of the Health Belief Model that is commonly used in Public Health studies. 

On the one hand we carried out a large scale online study on French reacrational forest users to observe how their perception and knowledge of ticks and tick-borne diseases impacted their self-protection. Other co-authors: Natalia Zugravu-Soilita, Laurent Dalmas, Josiane Kean.

On the other hand we build a theoretical model in the wake of Ehlrich and Becker (Journal of Political Economy, 1972) to tackle the role of risk perception and rissk aversion on optimal self-protection decisions.

The following video on the EconomiX Youtube channel summarizes our main findings (in French).