Publications

Craft Beverage Trail Collaborations in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is second in the nation when it comes to the amount of craft beer produced, and the number of breweries in Pennsylvania has increased steadily since 2010. Most of these engage in some form of beer tourism, and doing so can enhance local and regional tourism by offering brewery events on site, attending craft beverage/ale/local festivals, participating in craft beverage trails, and being part of brewery bus tours. These activities are often developed in collaboration with destination marketing organizations to attract more tourists to an area.

With funding from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, a team of Penn State Extension researchers led by Claudia Schmidt conducted a study to gain a better understanding of these collaborations. They selected six beer trails across the commonwealth and interviewed their managers/administrators about how their trails began, gamification components (passports and memberships), the challenges they encountered and what recommendations they might have for others who would like to establish a trail in their county.

Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Sarah Cornelisse, and Harry Crissy

Publication: Published by NERCRD Date Published: June 23, 2021

Tags: craft beverage, tourism

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Female farmers in the United States: Research needs and policy questions

The literature on women in agricultural production in developing countries is vast. While female farmers in the United States have recently received more attention, their general characteristics and practices pursued have not received as much consideration by agricultural economists. Here we examine U.S. female farmers’ characteristics and factors associated with county level female farm shares using Census data. We find that these shares are higher near metropolitan core counties and that their presence is associated with agritourism activity as well as horticultural and small livestock production. We conclude with several policy questions and future research needed to assess the roles and impacts of female farm operators in the U.S.

Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Stephan J. Goetz, Zheng Tian

Publication: Science Direct Date Published: May 1, 2021

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The Intergenerational Friends Fair: A Facilitator’s Guide

Intergenerational Friends Fairs (IFF) are fun, family oriented, daylong events that engage community residents in a wide range of intergenerational activities, spanning the realms of art, storytelling, music, dance, and play. At the same time, these events provide local groups and organizations that conduct intergenerational programs with an additional platform for connecting with the public, establishing new partnerships, and garnering increased support for their programs.

Authors: Matt Kaplan, Lori Pacchioli

Publication: Published by NERCRD Date Published: April 9, 2021

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Rural Development Implications One Year After COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching impacts on most sectors of the U.S. economy, and these impacts have been uneven across rural and urban areas. On the one hand, rural areas were already lagging behind urban areas in many sectors before the pandemic (Ajilore and Willingham, 2019; U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2018), including in terms of educational attainment, access to health care and broadband, and general economic progress (e.g., Dobis et al. 2020; Goetz, Partridge, and Stephens, 2018). On the other hand, lower rural population density and greater reliance on personal as opposed to public transportation likely reduced the rural populations’ exposure to the virus (Goetz et al., 2020). This special theme issue of Choices was commissioned by the Council on Food, Agriculture and Resource Economics (C-FARE) to examine how COVID-19 affected rural areas and prepared in collaboration with the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development on behalf of the Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDCs).

Authors: Stephan J. Goetz, Jane Kolodinsky

Publication: Choices Magazine Date Published: April 1, 2021

Tags: COVID-19

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Data Brief: Pennsylvania Food Insufficiency Reached New High at the End of 2020

NERCRD Covid-19 Data Report 21-01: The share of Pennsylvania households in which hunger is a problem has increased to the highest rate since the data were first collected at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey, the share of adults in households where there was either sometimes or often not enough to eat in the last seven days reached a new high of 12.7% on December 19, 2020, just slightly below the national rate on that day (12.9%). In this report we also show how families have adapted to this crisis by accessing free food and how households with different incomes have been affected by rising food insecurity.

Authors: Stephan J. Goetz; Zheng Tian; Claudia Schmidt; Yuxuan Pan

Publication: NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief Series Date Published: February 12, 2021

Tags: COVID-19, COVID-19 Data Briefs

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2020 Annual Report

This report summarizes annual accomplishments and activities at the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development.

Authors: Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development

Date Published: February 1, 2021

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If You Build Them… Will it Matter? Food Stores’ Presence and Perceived Barriers to Purchasing Healthy Foods in the Northeastern U.S.

Policies incentivizing store entry or store improvements are aimed at increasing access to healthy foods; however, findings about their effectiveness to improve diets are mixed. Similarly, little is known about whether food stores’ presence affects consumers’ perceived barriers to purchasing healthy foods, which reflect the subjective hardships experienced by shoppers to purchase and consume healthier foods. In this study, we assess the relationship between the two most widely studied perceived barriers to purchasing healthy foods (price and availability) and the local retail food environment using individual-level survey data collected across the northeastern US and census data on the numbers of grocery stores and warehouse clubs and supercenters. Our results indicate that unobserved heterogeneity plays an important role in determining the sign and magnitude of the relationship between store presence and perceptions. The likelihood that an individual cites price or availability as a perceived barrier depends upon the barrier considered, whether respondents live in the zip code where they shop, and the method of controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Thus, policies focusing on improving access to a given store type may only mitigate some of the negative perceptions associated with one’s food environment.

Authors: Lauren Chenarides, Alessandro Bonanno, Anne Palmer

Publication: Applied Economics Perspective and Policy Date Published: October 12, 2020

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The impact of external knowledge sourcing on innovation outcomes in rural and urban businesses in the U.S.

A summary of “The impact of external knowledge sourcing on innovation outcomes in rural and urban businesses in the U.S.,” by Kathryn R. Dotzel and Alessandra Faggian. Published in Growth and Change, 2019; 50: 515– 547. https://doi.org/10.1111/grow.12289. This brief was published on June 29, 2020.

Key Takeaways

• This study explored the relationship between innovation and knowledge management–the formation of structures that allow businesses to acquire and integrate new knowledge. The specific focus was on external knowledge sourcing–which outside sources firms target for information that supports the development of new and improved products and production processes.
• For both rural and urban businesses, sources of information characterized by strong ties and high degrees of trust (“primary” sources) had larger positive impacts on most considered innovation outcomes (compared to “secondary” sources).
• When primary knowledge sources were distinguished by industry orientation relative to the business, sources with knowledge bases outside of the business’s industry (“extra-industry” primary sources) had stronger positive relationships with the majority of considered innovation outcomes for rural businesses. Urban businesses, however, seemed to derive relatively equal benefits to innovation from relationships with their extra-industry and “intra-industry” primary sources–those with knowledge bases within the same industry.

Authors: Kristen Devlin and Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: NERCRD Innovation Issues Brief Series Date Published: June 29, 2020

Tags: Innovation Issues Briefs, rural innovation

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Sources of inspiration matter to business innovation outcomes

A summary of “Sources of innovation and innovation type: firm-level evidence from the United States,” by Mehmet Afik Demircioglu, David B. Audretsch, and Timothy F. Slaper. Published in Industrial and Corporate Change, 2019, 1-15, https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtz010. This brief was published on June 29, 2020.

Key Takeaways

• Businesses tap different sources of knowledge and creativity to drive their innovation activities. Different innovation outcomes are associated with different sources of knowledge.
• Customers, workers, and universities are sources of knowledge positively associated with all types of innovation activity.
• Universities had the statistically strongest effect, suggesting that they are critical to innovation.

Authors: Kristen Devlin and Stephan J. Goetz

Publication: NERCRD Innovation Issues Brief Series Date Published: June 29, 2020

Tags: Innovation Issues Briefs, rural innovation

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Google Searches Reveal Changing Consumer Food Sourcing in the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this commentary published in 2021, we examine how consumer interest changed since the advent of the pandemic, by observing Google search trends.

Authors: Claudia Schmidt, Stephan J. Goetz, Sarah Rocker, Zheng Tian

Publication: Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development Date Published: May 21, 2020

Tags: COVID-19

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