Progress 01/01/22 to 11/07/23
Outputs
Target Audience: Our target audience consists of researchers in the fields of agricultural and productions economics, labor economics, human resource management, and business management; producers of hand harvested produce; and potentially downstream buyers of agricultural products, including retailers. During this reporting period we have reached the following members of our target audiences: Researchers in the field of agricultural and production economics; Producers of hand harvested produce. We have reached these target audiences through: Academic presentations at professional association meetings and invited seminars, and two research articles (one accepted at the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and one re-submitted with a revise and resubmit at Economic Inquiry) Project planning and dissemination meetings with the management teams of the partner farms. We have drafted a summary of one of our research articles to be published as an ARE Update - a bimonthly magazine published by the University of California Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics. The magazine targets and is distributed to an audience of policy makers, Cooperative Extension advisors, agribusiness managers, and other professionals. We will submit this short dissemination piece once our article has been accepted for publication to conveythe findings to a broader, non-academic audience. But we are waiting until the manuscript has been accepted to avoid any confusion or issues with the journal requirements for original work. Changes/Problems: With a few exceptions, we accomplished our stated accomplishments for the last reporting period. These exceptions include: our manuscript related to objective 1 is not yet published (but does now have a revise and resubmit at Economic Inquiry); while we hired a graduate student in the fall 2023 semester at CSU, our aim was to also hire this student for the summer and fall semesters to continue progress on the project. However, the biggest setback on the project this reporting period occurred because the PI moved institutions and is now employed at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently in the process of transferring this grant. Given this, we made less progress on objectives 2 and 3 during the past reporting period, and accordingly spent less of the grant funding to support the project. We will be asking for an extension to the project when transferring the grant to the University of California in light of these setbacks and to ensure we can continue making appropriate progress on our objectives. There are a few other implications from this change of institutions, including that both postdoctoral researchers and graduate student research assistants are more expensive than at Colorado State. In light of this, we will need to update our budget, but are planning to fully reallocate the funds for the postdoctoral researcher to a UCB graduate student researcher. We are hopeful that other aspects of the project will not be negatively impacted by this move. In fact, so far the move has been beneficial for the project and its dissemination because the PI has been able to meet with the partner farms in person since moving. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? The project created opportunities for training and professional development for the hired CSU graduate student. This student was uniquely positioned to aid in this project for several reasons. The student comes from a background of strawberry harvesting -- his parents are both agricultural workers and he previously spent his summers in the fields near our study area harvesting strawberries. This student contributed his unique and detailed understanding of the industry, task, and language to the project. In return, we worked to improve the student's analytical toolkit. Prior to joining CSU, he had never used statistical analysis software beyond Excel, but was eager to gain these skills. He expressed the most interest in learning R, so we allotted some of his time as a research assistant for the project to training in R. We provided him with a variety of online training resources to accomplish this, in addition to our own help, and provided him with (analysis) tasks for the project each week that he could use to apply the materials from his online courses that week. He successfully developed several visualizations of both the speed and quality that we presented to farm management. He also produced a summary report with an exploratory data analysis, including some simple regressions. We additionally worked with the student to draft a description of the incentive program that will be included in our final manuscript. I believe that these experiences with writing also contributed to the professional development of the student, since had really limited exposure to economic research prior to joining our team. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? During this reporting period we have continued to disseminate findings from objective 1 to the partner farms through project planning and dissemination meetings with the farms' management and leadership teams. These findings, in conjunction with conversations and consultations with the research team, were used by the partner farms in deciding on the quality bonuses they would implement on farms in the 2023 season. We are still awaiting the publication of our main paper for this objective to release our prepared companion piece to ARE Update - the widely read outreach publication of the Giannini Foundation This outreach piece will reach a large number of employers of hand harvested crop in California, one of our communities of interest. In addition, we are currently preparing a companion piece to our secondary publication that arose while working on objective one - looking at the effects of pollution on worker productivity. We are planning to either submit this piece as an ARE Update or make it available on the PI's website. We have additionally disseminated our results to academic audiences, which are one of our target audiences, via conference and invited presentations. These include: the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual meeting; the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Annual Meeting; the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Department of Agricultural Economics Seminar Series; and Kansas State University, Department of Agricultural Economics Seminar Series. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? In the next reporting period, we aim to have published the final research article from objective 1, as well as the companion outreach piece. We will then fully turn our attention toward making headway on project objectives 2 and 3. This will entail continuing to monitor and furthering our analysis of the data on worker speed, strawberry quality, and retailer rejections in the 2023 growing season; hiring a graduate student research assistant at the University of California, Berkeley for the 2024 summer and fall semesters to assist in this analysis; meeting with the partner farms to discuss results from the analysis; preparing a manuscript for submission at a journal such as the Journal of Labor Economics or the American Journal of Agricultural Economics based on findings from the analysis of the 2021, 2022, and 2023 quality incentive payments; and presenting results at the AAEA annual meeting in summer 2024.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1: Does Haste Make Waste? Quantify the speed and quality trade-off using observational data. The aim of objective 1 is to quantify the speed and quality trade-off using two seasons of already collected data provided by the participating grower. We propose estimating speed-quality elasticities using an IV approach and linked data on worker speed and quality. Accomplishments:In the prior reporting period we had produced a research article, entitled "Haste Makes Waste: Evidence on Speed and Quality Tradeoffs in the Workplace," and submitted it to Labour Economics. Unfortunately, the article was not accepted as this journal and we did substantial work to revise the manuscript per feedback received by these reviewers and from presenting the article. This revised addresses this question using observational data from the participating grower from years 2018 and 2019, and now uses a system of simultaneous equations rather than an IV estimation approach. The new manuscript is titled "Evidence on Quality Spillovers from Speed Enhancing Policies in the Workplace" and has a revise and resubmit at Economic Inquiry. In the process of revising this manuscript, we also explored new avenues for potential mechanisms that might elicit these speed and quality trade-offs. This process led to an additional publication that looks at the effects of pollution on worker productivity that is coauthored with the PI, two environmental economists, and a team of atmospheric science researchers. Because this manuscript required data going further back than the quality collection process, and was already quite long without quality considerations, this manuscript only looks at the effects of pollution on worker speed. However, our aim is to use this manuscript as a reference to motivate future work that examines the speed and quality tradeoff evoked by pollution for outdoor agricultural workers. We believe that this mechanism, unlike the others we have studied, might actually decrease both speed and quality, since pollution is understood to impact both physical and mental capacity, whereas our other mechanisms only directly impacted motivation for speed. This project proved quite interesting and meaningful both from an academic perspective and from farm management's perspective since we demonstrated that the farms themselves were contributing to pollution, which then caused workers to slow down. This article was just released online in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and acknowledges this grant as supporting the work: Hill, Alexandra E., Burkhardt, J., Bayham, J., O'Dell, K., Ford, B., Fischer, E.V., and Pierce, J.R. (2023). "Air Pollution, Weather, and Agricultural Worker Productivity." American Journal of Agricultural Economics. DOI: 10.1111/ajae.12439? Objective 2: Direct Quality Incentives. Estimate speed and quality effects of paying workers for quality. The aim of objective 2 is to estimate the effects of quality incentive payments on both speed and quality. This objective requires real time monitoring of our quasi-experimental intervention consisting of paying a treatment group of harvesters different forms of a quality bonus over 3 growing seasons. Accomplishments:We have worked with the participating growers to implement 3 distinct forms of quality bonuses that were identified through conversations with farm management as the most economically viable and preferred options. These quality bonuses have now been implemented on three different farms and consist of: (1) a quality bonus paid to management (the crew supervisor); (2) a quality bonus paid to workers based on crew quality and individual productivity; and (3) a quality bonus paid to workers based on crew quality alone. These quality bonuses were implemented in the 2021, 2022, and 2023 growingseasons, with different bonus levels in each. In the prior reporting period, we implemented real-time monitoring of the productivity and output quality of workers by building Tableau dashboards that are accessible by the research team. These dashboards are directly linked with anonymized real-time data on the speed (number of trays delivered) and output quality (percent defects, percent bruising, and percent decay) of harvesters on the three study farms. We have provided regular updates on key statistics from these dashboards to upper-level farm management. In this reporting period, with the aid of the CSU graduate student hired in the spring semester, we worked to analyze the effects of these quality bonuses in the 2022 and 2023 harvest seasons. We are currently working to synthesize findings from the prior two growing seasons to produce a journal publication on the optimal payment schemes for maximizing speed and quality while minimizing production costs. Consistent with our observational evidence, we indeed find that workers trade-off between speed and quality. But the gains in terms of quality from these payments appear more substantive than the losses in productivity. Overall quality has improved on the farms compared with prior years, but we are continuing our efforts to disentangle (1) which incentive is most impactful and (2) what levels of incentives yield optimal levels of speed and quality. Objective 3: Refusals. Quantify the value of quality in terms of the marginal effect of quality on the probability of shipment refusals. The aim of objective 3 is to quantify the short-term value of quality to growers. To do so we will link our data on quality with sales data provided by the retailer to estimate the effect of quality on the likelihood a shipment is rejected. We will then use the cost associated with each rejection to quantify the marginal cost of quality. Accomplishments:We are continuing to track retail refusals and the linked quality-sales-refusals data. In the 2023 season, we have additionally added data from a major buyer from the firm on store-level throw-aways. While these throw-aways are not necessarily meaningful to the grower, they do contribute to overall waste in the agri-food systemand appear strongly linked with one dimension of quality -- decay. In this period, we created a Tableau dashboard of these data and have provided updates to farm management on our preliminary findings. Using these data, we have found preliminary evidence that poorer quality - in particular higher occurrences of strawberry decay - are linked with a higher likelihood of refusals. We primarily focused our efforts on Objective 2 in this reporting period, but we have continued to work on our empirical analysis of these data.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Submitted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Hill, A.E. and Beatty, T.K.M. Evidence on Quality Spillovers from Speed Enhancing Policies in the Workplace. Revise and resubmit at Economic Inquiry
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Hill, A.E., Burkhardt, J., Bayham, J., ODell, K., Ford, B., Fischer, E.V., and Pierce, J.R. 2023. Air Pollution, Weather, and Agricultural Worker Productivity. Forthcoming at the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
|
Progress 01/01/22 to 12/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience: Our target audience consists of researchers in the fields of agricultural and productions economics, labor economics, human resource management, and business management; producers of hand harvested produce; and potentially downstream buyers of agricultural products, including retailers. During this reporting period we have reached the following members of our target audiences: 1. Researchers in the field of agricultural and production economics; 2. Producers of hand harvested produce. We have reached these target audiences through: 1. Academic presentations at professional associationmeetings and invited seminars, and one research article (submitted, but not yet accepted) 2. Project planning and dissemination meetings with the management teams of thepartner farms. Changes/Problems:The only substantive changes in our approach to the project are regarding the staffing of the CSU postdoctoral researcher. We chose to postpone hiring the CSU postdoctoral researcher becausewe have decided instead to hire a CSU graduate student. This graduate student joined the CSU program in fall 2022 to work with PI Hill on issues related to agricultural workers and is an excellent fit for this project for several reasons -- first, the student hasworked as a strawberry harvesters and has parents who are currently employed in strawberry harvesting in California; second, the student worked with the partner farms after completing his B.S. as a summer internship; third, the student is interested in the topic; fourth, the research will provide him with excellent opportunities for developing his data analytical skills and gaining experience presenting at academic conferences. However, we chose to wait until the spring semester to hire the student as a research assistant while he adjusts to Colorado and the first year coursework. The student plans to continue working on this project for the duration of his M.S. degree at CSU. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project created opportunities for training and professional development for the hired UC Davis graduate student in that the student took several (free) training courses in Tableau in their efforts to assemble the dashboards for live monitoring of the quality incentive payments. In later project years, we will provide further opportunities for graduate students to present results from the project at academic conferences, as well as to buildtheir training inprogramming and other opportunities that are useful for the project objectives and their future careers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During this reporting period we have disseminated findings from objective 1 to the partner farms through project planning and dissemination meetings with the farms' management and leadership teams. These findings, in conjunction with conversations and consultations with the research team,were used by the partner farms in deciding on the quality bonuses they would implement on farms. We have additionally prepared a companion piece for our completed paper that we will submit to ARE Update - the widely read outreach publication of the Giannini Foundation - once our main paper is published. This outreach piece will reach a large number of employers of hand harvested crop in California, one of our communities of interest. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period, we aim to have published the final research article from objective 1, as well as the companion outreach piece. We also aim to present this paper at two invited seminars and one academic conference prior to its final publication.Our primary efforts will be devotedto makingheadway on project objectives 2 and 3. This will entail continuing to monitor and beginninganalysis of thedata on worker speed, strawberry quality, and retailer rejections in the 2022 growing season; hiring a graduate student research assistant at Colorado State University for the 2023 spring, summer, and fall semesters to assist in this analysis (this student has already been identified);meeting with the partner farms to discuss results from the analysis; working with partner farms to implement updated quality incentives in the 2023 growing season; preparing a manuscript for submission at a journal such as the Journal of Labor Economics or the American Journal of Agricultural Economics based on findings from the analysis of the 2021 and 2022 quality incentive payments; and presenting results at the AAEA annual meeting in summer 2023.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1: Does Haste Make Waste? Quantify the speed and quality trade-off using observational data. The aim of objective 1 is to quantify the speed and quality trade-off using two seasons of already collected data provided by the participatinggrower. We propose estimating speed-quality elasticities using an IV approach and linked data on worker speed and quality. Accomplishments:We have produced a research article, entitled"Haste Makes Waste: Evidence on Speed and Quality Tradeoffs in the Workplace,"addressing this question using (observational) data from the participating grower from years 2018 and 2019. We have submitted this article for publication and are currently awaiting a decision at Labour Economics. Objective 2: Direct Quality Incentives. Estimate speed and quality effects of paying workers for quality. The aim of objective 2 is to estimate the effects of quality incentive payments on both speed and quality. This objective requires real time monitoring of our quasi-experimental intervention consisting of paying a treatment group of harvesters different forms of a quality bonus over 3 growing seasons. Accomplishments:We have worked with the participating growers to implement 3 distinct forms of quality bonuses that were identified through conversations with farm management as the most economically viable and preferred options. These quality bonuses have been implemented on three different farms and consist of: (1) a quality bonus paid to management (the crew supervisor); (2) a quality bonus paid to workers based on crew quality and individual productivity; and (3) a quality bonus paid to workers based on crew quality alone. We have implemented real-time monitoring of the productivity and output quality of workers by buiding Tableau dashboards that are accessible by the research team. These dashboards are directly linked with anonymized real-time data on the speed (number of trays delivered) and output quality (percent defects, percent bruising, and percent decay) of harvesters on the three study farms.We have provided regular updates on key statistics from these dashboards to upper-level farm management. These quality bonuses were implemented in the 2021 and 2022 growing seasons, and versions of themwill be implemented in the 2023 growing season. We are currently working to synthesize findings from the prior two growing seasons to produce a journal publication on the optimal payment schemes for maximizing speed and quality while minimizing production costs. Objective 3: Refusals. Quantify the value of quality in terms of the marginal effect of quality on the probability of shipment refusals. The aim of objective 3 is to quantify the short-term value of quality to growers. To do so we will link our data on quality with sales data provided by the retailer to estimate the effect of quality on the likelihood a shipment is rejected. We will then use the cost associated with each rejection to quantify the marginal cost of quality. Accomplishments:We are currently tracking retail refusals and have successfully linked quality, sales, and refusals data sources from 2018 through 2022. Using these data, we have found preliminary evidencethat poorer quality - in particular higher occurrences of strawberry decay - are linked with a higher likelihood of refusals. We are currently exploring these results empirically as well as theoretically and have drafted a paper entitled"Strategic Rejections: Flexible Enforcement of Minimum Quality Standards,with Application to the Fresh Strawberry Market."which models, in an IO framework,the theoretical incentives for retailers to reject products with lower quality, even if the products meet the technical standards for acceptance under PACA.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Haste Makes Waste: Evidence on Speed and Quality Tradeoffs in the Workplace. International Section Track Session Labor in Agri-Food Systems. Agricultural Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting; Anaheim, CA.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Submitted
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Hill, Alexandra E. and Beatty, Timothy K.M. Haste Makes Waste: Evidence on Speed and Quality Tradeoffs in the Workplace.
|