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Article History

Received: 9 April 2025

Accepted: 13 January 2026

First Online: 21 January 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: The ethical approval for the questionnaire and research methodology of this study was officially granted by the Institutional Review Board of Guangxi Normal University on July 1, 2020 (approval number: 202007-001). This approval covers the entire research process, including components such as participant recruitment, field data collection, data management, and measures to address potential ethical risks. All research activities were conducted in accordance with the relevant ethical guidelines of this Institutional Review Board and the requirements of the Declaration of Helsinki.

: This study fully respects the autonomy and informed rights of pig farmers. Prior to field interviews, interviewers clearly explained the research purpose, content, interview duration, and data usage to participating farmers. Given the low-risk and anonymous nature of this field survey, the front page of the paper questionnaire used by our research team in the survey conducted in Jiangsu Province, China, included a comprehensive informed consent statement, and no separate written consent form was employed. Upon the launch of each survey wave (i.e., the surveys conducted in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively), this statement was presented to participants to ensure that their participation was entirely voluntary. More specifically, informed consent was obtained from all participants on the following dates: July 12–18, 2020; August 10–17, 2021; and July 21–28, 2022. Anonymization measures were implemented for the questionnaire: it was designed without sensitive information that could identify individual respondents. All data were stored and analyzed anonymously, with strict restrictions on data access privileges, effectively mitigating the risk of information disclosure.