In this paper, we argue that the nature of animal disease (e.g. highly contagious or infectious
disease, the length of the incubation period, how obvious clinical signs are) matters greatly while
designing incentive structure for early disclosure of contagious disease. A more complete analysis of
farmer’s decision to timely report a disease outbreak or a suspicious case is needed. This study proposes a more realistic approach to tackle the problem of farmers’ motivation to disclose of a disease. A simple conceptual stochastic dynamic programming model is used to better understand and optimize the individual farmer decision of a timely disease reporting, given certain incentive parameters defined by a regulator. An empirical study is performed in the context of CSF, a highly contagious disease without obvious clinical signs, in the Netherlands. The model allows us to investigate which disease parameters and economic incentive parameters are essential and how they influence farmers’ decision on early disclosure. After providing basic results, the article discusses their implications and the further model improvement and including of principal-agent relationship in the model.