Prosocial Behaviour and Antibiotic Resistance: Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment

The health of a community depends on the health of its individuals; therefore, individual health behaviour can implicitly affect the health of the entire community. This is particularly evident in the case of infectious diseases. Because the level of prosociality in a community might determine the effectiveness of health programmes, prosocial behaviour may be a crucial disease-control resource. This study aimed to extend the literature on prosociality and investigate the role of altruism in antibiotic decision making.

A discrete choice experiment was conducted to assess the influence of altruism on the general public's preferences regarding antibiotic treatment options. The survey was completed by 378 Swedes. Latent class analysis models were used to estimate antibiotic treatment characteristics and preference heterogeneity. A three-class model resulted in the best model fit, and altruism significantly impacted preference heterogeneity.

Our findings suggest that people with higher altruism levels had more pronounced preferences for treatment options with lower contributions to antibiotic resistance and a lower likelihood of treatment failure. Furthermore, altruism was statistically significantly associated with sex, education, and health literacy.

Antibiotic awareness, trust in healthcare systems, and non-discriminatory priority setting appear to be structural elements conducive to judicious and prosocial antibiotic behaviour. This study suggests that prosocial messages could help to decrease the demand for antibiotic treatments.