Archive for Economic Development, Resilience, and Innovation
Agritourism and Direct Sales Clusters in the United States
Agritourism and direct-to-consumer sales are increasingly used as diversification strategies to generate additional farm revenue streams. Yet despite their growing importance, the impacts, interactions, and adoption of these strategies remain poorly understood. Here we use univariate and bivariate local Moran’s I statistics to identify agritourism and direct-to-consumer sales hotspots in the United States and a Seemingly-Unrelated-Regression Spatial Durbin Model to examine the association between agritourism and direct farm sales to consumers. We find that agritourism and direct sales reinforce each other within the same county but not consistently across neighboring counties.
Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Zheng Tian, Lisa Chase, Chadley Hollas and Stephan J. Goetz
Publication: Agricultural and Resource Economics Review Date Published: April 17, 2023
Rural US Residents Recognize Anxiety Better than Urbanites and Suburbanites but Hold Similar Stigma
Recognizing signs of psychological distress is a critical first step in assisting people who are struggling with poor mental health to access help. However, community-level factors that impact recognition and stigma are underexplored. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between rurality, other community-level variables, and individual variables with regard to the recognition and stigma of anxiety.
Authors: Scott Loveridge, Mark Skidmore, Robert Shupp, Paula K. Miller, Courtney Cuthbertson, Stephan J. Goetz
Publication: The Journal of Rural Health Date Published: March 29, 2023
Tags: mental health
Investing in Rural Recovery: Comprehensive Summary of National Rural Development Stakeholder Listening Sessions
This report summarizes results from the an initiative carried out by the Regional Rural Development Centers in 2021 and 2022 to identify investments needed to fill the gaps between rural communities’ assets and opportunities. These facilitated dialogues included four sessions conducted at the regional level focusing on issues of regional importance, and four national sessions on topics of widespread importance.
Authors: Jason Entsminger, John Green, Rachel Welborn, Renee Wiatt, Z. Bednarikova, Rianna Gayle, and Yuxuan Pan
Publication: Published by the Regional Rural Development Centers Date Published: February 27, 2023
Tags: COVID-19
The U.S. Recreation Economy: Data, COVID-19, and Implications for Extension
The breadth, depth, and speed of the economic collapse associated with the COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented in economic history. No sector was hit harder than Leisure and Hospitality, which accounts for the economic core of tourism and recreation-based activity. Only recently has employment in this sector begun to show signs of recovery toward pre-pandemic levels. Here we document the importance of the Leisure and Hospitality sector to the economy and identify impacts from the pandemic and recovery, at both state and local (county) levels. Selected implications for Extension Services programming by Land- and Sea-Grant institutions are highlighted.
Authors: Stephan J. Goetz, Luyi Han, Daniel Eades, Jason Entsminger, Doug Arbogast
Publication: 2021 NET Conference Proceedings Date Published: October 4, 2022
Tags: COVID-19
An Examination of the Informational Value of Self-Reported Innovation Questions
Self-reported innovation measures provide an alternative means for examining the economic performance of firms or regions. While European researchers have been exploiting the data from the Community Innovation Survey for over two decades, uptake of U.S. innovation data has been much slower. This paper uses a restricted innovation survey designed to differentiate incremental innovators from more far-ranging innovators and compares it to responses in the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE) and the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) to examine the informational value of these positive innovation measures. The analysis begins by examining the association between the incremental innovation measure in the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey (REIS) and a measure of the inter-industry buying and selling complexity. A parallel analysis using BRDIS and ASE reveals such an association may vary among surveys, providing additional insight on the informational value of various innovation profiles available in self-reported innovation surveys.
Authors: Zheng Tian, Timothy R. Wojan, Stephan J. Goetz
Publication: U.S. Census Bureau Working Paper Number CES-22-46 Date Published: October 1, 2022
Tags: rural innovation
Impacts of COVID-19 on Northeast Tourism and Recreation Economies
NERCRD COVID-19 Data Brief 22-02: This data brief characterizes tourism-related economic changes in the Northeast during the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparisons between rural and metro counties are highlighted, showing that different tourism and recreation economies experienced the pandemic’s effects differently too.
Download the data brief:
Data Supplement
Download detailed Northeast state-level data here.
Authors: Jason Entsminger, Luyi Han, and Stephan J. Goetz
Publication: NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief Series Date Published: July 27, 2022
Tags: COVID-19, COVID-19 Data Briefs
Impacts of COVID-19 on Northeast Economic Activity
NERCRD COVID-19 Data Brief 22-01: This brief is the first in a series to summarize the economic impacts of COVID-19 on Northeastern communities. In subsequent briefs, the series will highlight impacts in key industries and sectors.
Data Supplement
Download an excel spreadsheet providing GDP data at the regional and state level for the Northeast US, to accompany NERCRD Data Brief 22-01, “Impacts of COVID-19 on Northeast Economic Activity.”
Authors: Jason Entsminger, Luyi Han, and Stephan J. Goetz
Publication: NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief Series Date Published: July 27, 2022
Tags: COVID-19, COVID-19 Data Briefs
An early assessment of COVID-19’s impact on tourism in U.S. counties
We use county-level data to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the tourism and hospitality sector, which was by far the most impacted of all sectors, focusing on employment and wage changes. Results support our hypothesis that rural counties experienced fewer negative impacts or even benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of job growth. We present maps showing the pandemic’s effects on leisure and hospitality (L&H) employment across the nation, identifying the communities both hardest hit and least impacted. A linear regression model is developed to explore independent factors that influenced the pandemic’s local impact. Results are robust across different measures of the key variable (rurality), including rural-urban continuum codes, distance from metropolitan areas, and population density. We also consider the impacts of social capital, income, and local economic diversification, among other factors. Our results suggest that remote, less-populated counties were more likely to experience stable employment in the L&H sector relative to pre-pandemic levels, and in some cases even experienced employment growth.
Authors: Luyi Han, Stephan J. Goetz, Daniel Eades, Jason Entsminger, Doug Arbogast
Publication: Tourism Economics Date Published: June 16, 2022
Tags: COVID-19