Progress 09/01/08 to 08/31/13
Outputs
Target Audience: Two data collection activities were conducted this year. Here are the details: 1. Objective 3 (continued): Target audience were foodservice managers in restaurants that have implemented HACCP in their operations. The purpose was to investigate the costs associated with implementing HACCP activities in foodservice operations. 2. Obective 5 (continued): Target audience were consumers. The purpose was to investigate which of the consumer education programs we had developed would be most effective. Changes/Problems: As stated earlier, the biggest challenge that this project faced was working with the industry. There were several reasons for this challenge: 1. HACCP implementation: While several foodservice companies have implemented HACCP, the stage at which they can currently claim to have accomplished HACCP implementation varies significantly. As a consequence it was challenging to get data from companies that would be a similar stages of HACCP implementation. 2. HACCP versus food safety procedures: In context of the first reason stated above, foodservice companies were unable to verify whether they have attained HACCP standards or simply in the process of getting to those levels. 3. Sensitive topic: Foodserivce companies are sensitive to the issue of food safety. It was challenging to get their commitment to openly discuss with us their food safety practices. The consequence of this challenge was that our project was significantly delayed. As a result we had to request for two no-cost extensions. If it was not for this challenge we would have completed our project in time. However, despite this challenge we are confident that even beyond the completion of this project we are aligned and scheduled to compelte all tasks promised in our proposal. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? This project has provided the following opportunities of training and educational development: 1. Graduate students: Through this project 2 graduate students were trained. One of these graduate students received a Masters degree, and completed the masters thesis research. 2. Collaboration/training of colleagues: This project facilitated collaboration with the Delaware State University. The research activities allowed us to provide training through these activities to our collaborators at DSU. The collaboration that began with this project has and will continue with the research colleagues at DSU. 3. Teaching and instruction: The PI and investigators have used extensive examples from this project in their undergraduate and graduate teaching of respective courses. This topic remains novel and unique, therefore research in this area is limited. Examples from the project in teaching activities were most valuable and provided a unique perspective for students. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Peer reviewed papers: This project was seriously delayed due to unexppected challenges we faced working with the industry. As a consequence we are still waiting for one significant data, and analyziing others. We expect to continue submtting papers from this research even beyond the official completion of this project. Conferenece presentation: Several conference presentations were made during the entire duration of this project. Most of these presentations were at leasding international conferences and annual meetings. But several others were at more discipline focused academic meetings, classroom settings, and other non-academic settings such at to industry professionals and industry advisory panels. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Beyond completion of this project the research team plans to accomplsish the following: 1. Objective 2-3: Complete submitting academic papers to peer reviewed journals. At the moment, we plan to submit three papers emerging out of the data gathered from these two objectives. Furthermore, the team will develop one extension and outreach publication from the results and conclusions of these papers. 2. Objective 4: Complete submitting three academic papers to peer reviewed journals. In addition, the research team will develop information related to consumer preferences that could be posted at government websites and that of the PI. 3. Objective 5: The team will complete analyzing the data and submit one more paper to a peer reviewed journal. Additionally the team will finalize posting of two educational videos, one each for managers and consumers, one government websites and the PI's research website.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1-2: Accomplished in full. Objective 3: The purpose of these objectives was to estimate the costs of implementing HACCP in foodserive organizations. The framework that we had developed in Obejctive 1 and 2 was implemented in Objective 3. In implementing Objective 3, the team developed an online survey instrument that would investigate costs using a quasi experimental design. We believe this is one of the only experimental survey developed to investigate actual costs of HACCP. We have been working with the industry to collect cost data. This has been the most significant challenge of the project. Our industry partners are still reviewing the survey instrument and we hope to complete data collection in the next few weeks. Objective 4: Accomplished in full. Objective 5: The purpose of this objective was to develop consumer and management educational materials. A total of five videos were developed to provide educational information to our target audiences. We have conducted a consumer survey to investigate the best possible HACCP video. Upon analysis of this data we will be able to finalize the video that would be found most effective in improving consumer knowledge of HACCP.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Sharma, A. (2013). Cost-Benefits of HACCP in Foodservice Establishments. Presented at the Society of Benefit-Cost Analysis annual meeting in Washington, DC., March 2013.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Radhakrishna, R., Sharma, A., Cutter, C. (2013). Consumer Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Food Safety Practices: Implications for Cooperative Extension. Targeted at the Journal of Extension. (Publication in the process of being submitted)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Alphonce, R., Alfnes, F., & Sharma, A. (2013). Voting or Buying: Inconsistency in Preferences toward Food Safety in Restaurants. In 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, DC (No. 150296). Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
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Progress 09/01/10 to 08/31/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: Objective 1-3: The activity Based costing data has been analyzed and we are in the process of collecting additional data from our industry partners. The next stage in the accomplishment of these objectives will be to incorporate stochastic processes in the variables. Once we have analyzed the additional datasets, we expect to come up with cost estimates to then put together with the benefits estimates of the choice experiment data of Objective 4. One conference presentation and another paper from this output is expected in Spring 2013. Objective 4: We are in the process of writing 2 publications from the dataset that was collected through the choice experiments. Objective 5: Consumer education delivery was investigated in two studies. We conducted two experimental studies via Qualtrics online survey software. The sample was recruited from 400 individuals that took part in the previous HACCP study in 2010 and agreed to participate in future studies (Sharma, 2010). The sample was composed of residents of a State College including faculty, staff, students, and company employees, etc. One hundred and sixty-one usable responses were included in the data analysis. We examined message valence and involvement in an attribute framing study and a goal framing study. In each study, two message delivery forms, article and video, were used to introduce HACCP and provide food safety knowledge to consumers. In total, we developed 4 different articles and 4 different videos with help from two external professionals. There were three research objectives of this project. The first objective was to investigate the valence effects in attribute framing (Study I) and goal framing (Study II). In each study, we tested whether positively framed messages or negatively framed messages were more effective in eliciting consumers favorable attitude and behavioral intention toward the implementation of HACCP in foodservice businesses. The second objective was to examine whether consumers involvement with the HACCP intervention moderated the effects of valence on consumer attitude and behavioral intention. Furthermore, we investigated two delivery forms, article and video form, of the HACCP interventions. We examined how delivery forms influenced the occurrence of message framing effects and effectiveness of the HACCP intervention. Results indicated that most consumers had very favorable attitude and behavioral intention toward HACCP implementation. The effectiveness of positively framed messages and negatively framed messages were equivalent. Article and video delivery form are not equally effective in eliciting specific behavioral intentions. Therefore, the choice of a more effective delivery form depends on which behavioral intention we aim to elicit. In addition, significant interactions were found between selected involvement items and valence of messages, indicating that involvement moderated the effect of message framing on consumers attitude and behavioral intention toward HACCP implementation. These results will be used to develop training programs for consumers and manager. PARTICIPANTS: The following individuals worked on this project: Dr. Amit Sharma Dr. Cynthia Mayo Dr. Frode Alfnes Dr. Rama Radhakrishna Dr. Catherine Cutter Ms. Stephanie Qing (Graduate Assistant) TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audience for the project were as follows: Objectives 1-4: Food service establishment management Objective 4-5: Consumers PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
Objectives 1-3: The resulting model with cost estimates will now be enhanced to increase accuracy by incorporating additional data points, and include stochastic processes. Objective 4: The choice experiment results are being used to develop consumer education programs. Objective 5: Results of the experimental studies are being used to develop appropriate delivery programs for consumer and management education.
Publications
- None to report this year. We expect publications in Spring 2013.
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Progress 09/01/09 to 08/31/10
Outputs
OUTPUTS: Objective 1 and 2: An extension publication has been completed and is ready for dissemination to the food service industry, particularly our working partners. The title of the publication is: Food Safety: The Cost of HACCP. This publication will be shared with our working partners as a lead into the next round of interviews and discussions. In addition to this output we also presented our findings at the Annual Conference of the International Association for Food Protection titled "Cost Analysis of HACCP Implementation in Foodservice Organizations." Objective 3: No extension or outputs as yet. Objective 4: Data collected so far is being analyzed. We expect this will lead to outputs for the food service industry as well as for the consumers. For the food service industry we expect to summarize the choice data of our experiment, food safety perceptions and knowledge of our consumer sample, and how these factors characterized the choices they made during the food choice experiment. For the consumers we would like to share the results of the knowledge survey that was embedded in our response questionnaire. Both these outputs will be widely shared within the industry, and among consumer groups. Objective 5: No extension outputs as yet. PARTICIPANTS: The following individuals worked on this project: Dr. Amit Sharma Dr. Anna Mattila Dr. Arun Upneja Dr. Cynthia Mayo Dr. Frode Alfnes Dr. Rama Radhakrishna Dr. Catherine Cutter Ms. Stephanie Qing (Graduate Assistant) TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audience for the project were as follows: Objectives 1-4: Food service establishment management Objective 4-5: Consumers PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
Objectives 1-2: So far we have developed the Activity Based Costing framework to assess the costs of our participating food service establishments. This framework is being pilot tested and will be ready for wider testing. This testing will also provide us additional data to conduct analyses on the various costs associated with HACCP in food service establishments. Objective 3: Once we complete testing the framework we will have the necessary data to complete work on Objective 3. The completion of this objective will lead to the development of a cost-benefit assessment model. We expect to develop a basic simulation model that could be implemented by using a third party software. This would allow food service establishments to gain a better understanding of how various costs and expected benefits impact the overall viability of food safety projects. Objective 4: The consumer experiments have been completed. We have gained valuable insights into conducting a large scale real time choice experiment. We have also gained several insights into how consumer make food choices in context of food safety information available or accessible to them. Once our data has been analyzed we expect this would lead to wider impact through our variety of publications and information dissemination strategies. Objective 5: We have begun working on the research design for accomplishing this objective. One Master's student thesis will be based on this work. Ms. Stephanie Qing will be working on her Master's thesis and pursuing this objective as the thesis topic. She expects to defend her research in Fall 2012.
Publications
- Sharma, A., & Roberts, K. (2011). HACCP Cost Analysis in Retail Food Establishments. Food Protection Trends, vol. 31, no. 12, pp. 834-844, December 2011
- Sharma, A., & Roberts, K. (2011). Cost Analysis of HACCP Implementation in Foodservice Organizations. Technical Presentation. International Association of Food Protection Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, WI, August 2011.
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Progress 09/01/08 to 08/31/09
Outputs
OUTPUTS: Objectives 1-3: This year we continued to work on objectives 1-3 that focused on developing, verifying, and implementing an ABC based HACCP costing framework for foodservice organizations. After our baseline survey from last year we developed an excel based Activity Based Costing model. We are currently testing this model with dummy data, and then we will pilot test it with two food service organizations: Penn State University and Delaware State University dining services. We are also in the process of developing the next survey instrument. The model together with the survey instrument will be used to conduct the next set of interviews with our participating organizations. These interviews will be used to verify the model. Once the model has been verified we will develop a web-based module and invite additional industry participants to test the model. The model will then be used to verify its effectiveness by incorporating certain changes in HACCP requirements, whether actual or hypothesized. We hypothesize that the model will be able to provide changes in costs based on these HACCP requirement changes. The ongoing assessment of HACCP costs resulted in three student research projects. These projects were also aimed at assessing food safety costs in: independent restaurants; and food allergy costs in restaurants. Objective 4 - consumer experiments: The consumer experiments were conducted during June-August 2010. As proposed, the consumer experiments were conducted at Cafe Laura, Penn State University. The experiments included 878 participants recruited from the university and the local community. In our proposal we had targeted 800 participants and therefore we accomplished our objective. The experiments were planned, organized, and conducted by a team of 3 researchers, 5 graduate students, and a team of undergraduate students. The Survey Research Center provided logistical support to recruit participants and disperse incentives. In addition, we had hired 2 food production staff (chefs) to help prepare the food. The production efforts also provided experience for a number of students as Cafe Laura is a student run operation. This study resulted in eight set of surveys, and a research design that incorporated a real-time choice experiment in two different settings. Presentation: The following invited presentation included preliminary results from objectives 1-4: Sharma, A. Qualitative Methods in Hospitality Research - Recent Projects. The Career Academy, International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education Annual Congress, San Francisco, CA, July 2009. Website: We have created the following websites for the project. https://sites.google.com/site/haccpinfoodservice https://sites.google.com/site/haccpinfoodservice/questionnaire https://sites.google.com/site/haccpinfoodservice/experimental-procedu re All these websites will be eventually linked to the Penn State University's corporate extension website on food safety. http://extension.psu.edu/food-safety PARTICIPANTS: Amit Sharma Anna Mattila Arun Upneja Cathy Cutter Rama Radhakrishna Cynthia Mayo Frode Alfnes Kevin Roberts Kwanglim Seo Survey Research Center - PSU TARGET AUDIENCES: Foodservice organizations: Restaurants, Grocery Stores, and Gas Stations Individual consumers PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
Objective 1-3 The initial results of the baseline survey resulted in the development of a costing framework. Through this framework we were also able to better evaluate the characteristics of HACCP related costs in foodservice organizations. We report these in a peer-reviewed paper. This investigation helped us explicitly understand the nature of HACCP related costs categorized as fixed versus variable; corporate versus unit level; and onetime versus ongoing. The most significant knowledge gain from this investigation as that most HACCP related costs were ongoing, largely fixed due to employee time costs; and shared across corporate and unit levels. Amongst the ongoing costs, employee time came out to be the most significant. Ironically, we also found that most that such costs were at the highest risk of being taken for granted. As a consequence, most organizations may not have a good estimate of what their employee costs are to implement HACCP procedures. We also found that all our industry partners were not estimating or accounting for such costs. Lack of this explicit awareness of the cost structure and characteristics could lead to management inefficiently estimating such costs. This investigation also led to three student research projects. These projects were also aimed at assessing food safety costs in: independent restaurants; and food allergy costs in restaurants. All three student projects used the framework of the survey instrument we developed to accomplish objectives 1-3. The results of the first two independent studies were published in a peer-reviewed journal. The third study has recently been completed - we expect to publish this too in a peer-reviewed journal. All three studies found similar results to our main study - that foodservice organizations are not aware of food safety costs. The question is how does this impact their judgment We intend to investigate this question in our next stage of verifying the costing model. Objective 4: The consumer experiments helped us gain a better understanding of how consumer might be making decisions regarding food safety based purchase criteria. We wanted to investigate whether consumers were willing to pay more for HACCP approved foods, their perceptions of food safety, and their knowledge of HACCP. We found that most individuals were unaware of the treatment meals that had the HACCP signs. Furthermore, we also found out that there is an element of status-quo bias amongst restaurants and other food service organization. We also wanted to investigate how could availability of additional information influence consumer decisions. However, very few consumers requested additional information. We then asked them during an exit interview why some of them did not ask for additional information. We hope to better understand how consumers choose foods based on food safety information and meal prices. This information will also help industry make a numerous decisions about food safety, consumer awareness, and estimate benefits related to food safety.
Publications
- We are currently completing three publications, and all these will be sent out for publication by December 15th 2010.
- Sharma, A., Roberts, K., & Seo, K. (2010). HACCP Cost Analysis in Retail Food Establishments. Food Protection Trends.
- Seo, K, Wu, L, Sharma, A., Mattila, A. (2010). Applying a quasi-experimental design to hospitality research: challenges and opportunities. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
- Ranjeva, M., Seo, K, Sharma, A., Mattila, A. (2010). Challenges and opportunities for undergraduate research experience. Hosteur.
- Ruetiman, L., Derr, E., Kokkinou, A., & Sharma, A. (2009). Comparison of HACCP Costs and benefits in Commercial and Non-Profit Foodservice Organizations. Hosteur, 18(1), 19-23.
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