Recipient Organization
UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
LOGAN,UT 84322
Performing Department
Applied Economics
Non Technical Summary
The long-term goal and supporting objectives of this proposed project are to increase rural economic development for tribal communities through rural entrepreneurship. The short-term goal is to increase the number of American Indian-owned small businesses as well as understand the limiting factors for entrepreneurship growth on American Indian reservations. Many American Indian reservations face extreme poverty, high unemployment and remote areas. For programs and policies to be effective, they need to recognize the unique issues for tribal communites (i.e. trust land) and find efficient methods for mitigating the effects of these issues. It is also important to be culturally appropriate. This project will assess how the climate for entrepreneurship in tribal communities and explore methods that can facilitate business development and growth.New models will be developed to facilitate American Indians ability to formulate their ideas for entrepreneurship into business plans. Programming will also be developed to improve access to existing resources for business development by American Indians. In addition, research will highlight the obstacles to rural entrepreneurship on reservations and develop the best practices that will be used in Extension programming to both entrepreneurs, Extension staff, and tribal governments. The project is integrated with Extension and research components. An advisory board will provide input on program needs and evaluate preliminary results and Extension materials. Materials will also be used interactively as part of the design and testing before final versions are published.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
30%
Developmental
70%
Goals / Objectives
The long-term goal and supporting objectives of this proposed project are to increase rural economic development for tribal communities through rural entrepreneurship. The short-term goal is to increase the number of American Indian-owned small businesses (or increase economic wellbeing of existing businesses) as well as understand the limiting factors for entrepreneurship growth on American Indian reservations.Evaluate current entrepreneurship and efforts including local regulations and other factors on reservations in Arizona, Nevada, South Dakota, and Utah;Assess limitations, and pitfalls for entrepreneurship including current existing programs;Assess effects of limitations on entrepreneurship and potential impacts of improving access to current programs as well as increasing levels of entrepreneurship;Increase the capacity of American Indian entrepreneurs and Tribes to sustain and grow entrepreneurial activity as a method to improve rural economic development; andInvestigate best practices in in tribal governance to grow and sustain American Indian operations as a method to improve rural economic development.
Project Methods
This project features an interdisciplinary approach to provide research and assistance to American Indian rural entrepreneurs.The approach to the Extension part of the project will be to recruit American Indian entrepreneurs to participate in the project through focus groups or the advisory committee. Extension materials on business plans, marketing, and finance already exist as a byproduct of current Extension programs however the examples may not be appropriate. New examples will be established taking into consideration unique tribal conditions, opportunities and pitfalls. The Extension team will build upon these examples to focus on gaps in services needed based upon the research portion of the project. Extension will also provide outreach through workshops as research is completed and Extension products are created.Researchers will provide a plan of research work working with the project advisory group. Research will focus on the following: reservations in four states will be chosen to provide differences in regions, climate and topography. The Extension and research team will work together to collect data and refine the research questions and options.Data collection will include some published secondary data as well as in-person focus groups and surveys. The focus group interviews will be used to gain insight into the perceptions land use and other regulations by AI entrepreneurs as well as their stated responses and behavioral changes from regulatory changes in leasing and business program assistance. The focus groups will allow collecting in-depth responses. This combined with surveys from a larger group of people will provide a better overall indication of the actual responses and perceptions. This is important because if the responses are based on skewed perceptions, then Extension programming and publications can focus to show the differences between perceptions and actual effects and differences in expected outcome from various strategies.The information from surveys and focus groups will be combined with publicly available data sets to create base line scenarios on costs and returns. Then these scenarios will use simulation models to assess the impacts on risk and returns from various strategies.Simulation models, which incorporate stochastic elements, are commonly used to assess production, market, and price risk in traditional agriculture (Richardson et al. 2007a, Richardson et al. 2007b, Watkins et al. 2008, Clark et al. 2010, Curtis et al. 2010, Kim, Curtis and Yeager, 2014). Simulation allows for a variety of situations to be considered by combining price, yield, and sales risk to produce a large number of outcomes such as revenue or profit. These outcomes, summarized by a probability distribution, show the likelihood of differing levels of profit, and provide the framework for comparing marketing decisions. Simulation models can be used more broadly to assess the differences in strategies and outcomes including policy changes. Project team members have used simulation to look at conserving water in arid regions (Bishop, Curtis, and Kim 2010, and examining waste recycling policies (Harris et. al. 2015).Easy to use simulation add-ons for Excel, such as Simetar, @Risk, and Crystal Ball, are available for simulation models. Richardson (2006a,b) outlined steps in developing simulation analysis of various policy changes. First probability distributions for all risky variables must be defined such as price and yield; parameterized; simulated and validated. Second, the stochastic variables from the probability distributions are used in the accounting equations to calculate production, receipts, costs, cash flows, and balance sheet variables for the scenarios or project. Stochastic values sampled from the probability distributions make the financial statement variables stochastic. Third, the completed stochastic model is simulated many times (i.e., 1,000 iterations) using random values for the risky variables. The results of the 1,000 samples provide the information to estimate empirical probability distributions for unobservable key output variables such as present value of end net worth, annual cash flows, and return or profit. A decision maker can evaluate the probability of success for a scenario, project, proposed change and so on. Fourth, the analysis uses stochastic simulation model to analyze alternative management scenarios, and provide the results to the decision-maker in the form of probabilities and probabilistic forecasts for the key output variables. This output will be the basis for illustrations and models of entrepreneurship best practices and examples.Research results will be disseminated to American Indian entrepreneurs in the four-state project area to enable more efficient use of business support resources which will increase the viability of American Indian businesses. There will be Extension materials designed and research articles published to provide the results to a national and international audience. Results will also be disseminated at national and regional conferences for American Indians.Extension workshops and presentations, both online and in-person, will increase the use of the research results in day-to-day management decisions. Results will also help train tribal staff, government staff, and build relationships between tribes and producers to facilitate entrepreneurship and use of business support programs. Research results published in the academic sector will increase awareness and knowledge of entrepreneurship on reservations and the impacts regulation has on both starting new businesses and business profitability.Evaluation design will feature a combination of instruments and methodologies for research and extension activities. Evaluation methods will produce both quantitative and qualitative impact data. Pre-tests and post-tests, featuring a Likert-type scale, will be designed to accompany Extension workshops, which will include curriculum materials, fact sheet of research results, and online webinars and platforms. Extension workshops and webinar will gauge immediate short-term knowledge gains and attitude changes. Any direct action taken from the research results will be documented as the projects works with the American Indian producers and tribal staff participating in the focus groups. This information will reflect impacts as well as provide feedback to improve the project design in subsequent years.The project is expected to accomplish both short-term goals stated. Long-term accomplishments will be seen beyond the three-year project term. The increase in knowledge will be documented at all Extension training programs, workshops, and national wide training opportunities. Increase in knowledge by American Indian entrepreneurs has the potential to lead to medium-term impact by tribal members taking action to start or expand businesses on reservations. Another medium-term impact can lead to tribal governments working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the regulations related business as well as programs currently in place to assist business owners. Long-term impacts could be measured by looking at businesses, profit and jobs over time.