What makes or breaks a campaign to stop an invading plant pathogen?

Diseases in humans, animals and plants remain an important challenge in our society. Effective disease control often requires coordinated concerted action of a large group of stakeholders. Both epidemiological and human behavioral factors influence the outcome of a disease control campaign. In mathematical models, that are frequently used to guide such campaigns, human behavior is often ill represented, if at all. Existing models of human, animal and plant disease that do incorporate participation or compliance are exclusively driven by pay-offs or direct observations of the disease state (1, 2). It is however very well known that opinion is the driving factor of human decision making (3). Here we show how coupling an epidemiological model with an opinion dynamic model it is possible to answer the question: What makes or breaks a disease control campaign? We use Huanglongbing disease of citrus as our case study.