Brian Roe

The Ohio State University | OSU · Department of Agricultural, Environmental & Development Economics

Communities are increasingly interested in bolstering sustainability by implementing local campaigns to reduce wasted food and divert it from landfills. Evaluation can be challenging, however, as community-engaged interventions may reach all community members, making it difficult to find an appropriate control group. We leverage a recently validate...

Diet change and food waste reduction are key levers for meeting climate change goals, but little is known about pursuing policies to shape both behaviors simultaneously. In a between-subjects field experiment, we randomly assign distinct cognitive and behavioral nudges focused on increasing vegetable consumption and decreasing food waste among food...

The proliferation of personal, household and workplace sensors and devices has created individual environments rich with purposeful and incidental feedback capable of altering behavior. We formulate an empirical learning model suitable for understanding individual behavioral responses in such environments. We estimate this model using data collecte...

There is growing concern whether pro-environmental behavioral interventions can generate sufficient reductions in carbon emissions to address climate change. While many have suggested enhanced tailoring of interventions to increase effect sizes, and while individual tailoring is common among health interventions, little is known about how individua...

Currently, 40% of food produced in the U.S. is never eaten, leading to lost resources, economic costs, decreased food security, and the wasted food itself, which has immense climate and ecological impacts. However, unwanted food can be leveraged towards sustainability aims by, for example, diverting high-quality surplus to food-insecure communities...

Ugly foods meet nutritional and safety benchmarks but deviate from cosmetic and size standards. The marketability of ugly food is a major factor that frustrates field-level food rescue efforts. We investigate opportunities to promote ugly foods in a way that converts uniform negative preferences towards ugly food to more diverse and horizontally di...

Background Improving Americans’ selection and consumption of vegetables without increasing food waste is 1 approach to help meet global health and environmental targets outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Objective To test nudges and educational messaging on consumer vegetable consumption and food waste. Study Design, Setting...

The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated considerable interest in the resilience of the U.S. food system. Less attention has been paid to the resiliency characteristics of the final link in the food system – individual households. We use national survey data from July 2020 to understand the food acquisition, preparation, and management strategies that...

The Household Food Waste Questionnaire (van Herpen et al. 2019a) was developed and validated as an effective instrument to identify statistically significant differences between households and to distinguish trends in household food waste over time. The original instrument was validated using consumers sampled from several European countries. We ad...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-021-09712-z

We investigate a number of canonical predictions that arise from relational contract theory. Employing an experimental design with endogenous choice of contract type, we find considerable experimental support for several well-established predictions, including the importance of self-enforcement and individual rationality constraints for contractual...

Individual perceptions of personal and national threats posed by COVID-19 shaped initial response to the pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in residents’ awareness about COVID-19 and to characterize those who were more aware and responsive during the early stages of the pandemic in Louisiana. In response to the mounting...

Choice experiments are a popular method of generating stated preference data for a variety of fields from marketing to health, transportation and environmental economics. They allow researchers to systematically vary choice attributes in a manner that can both increase estimation efficiency and allay endogeneity concerns. An increasing number of st...

Many campaigns promote the preservation and consumption of leftover food items as a critical household strategy to accomplish national consumer food waste reduction goals. We fill a gap in knowledge about the consumption and creation of leftovers in the United States by analyzing data from a pilot study in which 18 subjects tracked food selection,...

The FoodImageTM smartphone app transmits users’ photographs of food selection and food waste to researchers, and includes user-tagged information about waste reasons and destination. Twenty-four participants were trained to record food waste using FoodImage, food waste diaries requiring visual estimation of waste quantities, and diaries requiring s...

Food waste reduction is an explicit goal for many countries, yet a paucity of high-quality primary measurements of food waste are available to inform policy. We analyze repeated physical measurements of discarded food from more than 37,000 households enrolled in the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1991 to 2009 and describe relevant fo...

Perhaps no phenomenon has so quickly and radically altered household production parameters and daily food patterns as the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic. We contemplate the immediate and longer‐term implications of this public health crisis on the amount of food wasted by consumers. We conclude that the pandemic and its aftermath may improve househ...

The ongoing evolution of food waste trends and the intensification of livestock systems in developing economies play a critical role in shaping global sustainability. We explore the linkage between food waste and livestock systems at the household level and how this connection changed in China during the 1990s and 2000s when market liberalization w...

It is estimated that nearly one-third of food produced on the planet never meets its intended purpose of human nourishment. This represents a substantial stock of resources available for reallocation. Any potential reallocation of resources raises ethical issues – who should sacrifice (change current behaviors), who should benefit, and what methods...

A leading factor in the creation of avoidable household food waste is confusion about food date labels. In the United States, date labels are largely unregulated, resulting in a plethora of date label phrases used in commerce. Federal regulation has been proposed but never passed, while both industry and government have provided voluntary guidance...

U.S. households waste a substantial quantity of food and are advised to better manage purchasing and storage of perishable foods as a means to reduce food waste. However, little research exists concerning the contents and management of home refrigerators, which are central to most advice regarding home food waste reduction. We survey U.S. consumers...

Roughly one-third of edible food produced in the world is wasted, that is, it is never consumed by humans, despite the persistent demands for nutrition throughout the world. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “…the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings tha...

We analyze food-item level data collected from 50 adults from the United States using the Remote Food Photography Method® to provide the first estimates of plate waste gathered from adults across multiple consecutive meals and days in free-living conditions, and during laboratory-based meals with fixed food items and quantities. We find average pla...

Published plate waste studies featuring adult populations. (DOCX)

This paper examines self-enforcing contracts as a financial mechanism for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation when the opportunity cost of the land (i.e., landholder type) is private information and is imperfectly correlated over time (i.e., partially persistent types). Because self-enforcement limits the feasible in...

Despite their status as the largest and most systematic of government programs to promote local foods in the US, few studies identify the factors that are associated with the school district decision to participate in farm to school (FTS) programs. We are the first to leverage the USDA's Farm to School Census to analyze factors associated with FTS...

The debate as to whether to require mandatory labeling of genetically modified organism (GMO) foods was partially settled on 29 July 2016, when President Obama signed the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard into public law. In contrast to precipitating legislation passed by the State of Vermont that required disclosure of GMO ingredient...

We analyze how sellers of used construction equipment sort products between online and offline auctions based on the quality and transparency of different machine attributes. Sellers are more likely to offer machines online if quality is high for attributes whose integrity can be measured via photo (e.g., appearance) and more likely to offer machin...

We design a choice experiment comparing policies that reduce agricultural nutrient pollution and harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie and administer it to Ohio residents using an online survey panel. We compare two treatments that have been found to mitigate hypothetical bias, cheap talk and honesty priming, with a neutral priming control. We find gre...

We estimate models of consumer food waste awareness and attitudes using responses from a national survey of U.S. residents. Our models are interpreted through the lens of several theories that describe how pro-social behaviors relate to awareness, attitudes and opinions. Our analysis of patterns among respondents' food waste attitudes yields a mode...

Survey data. (XLSX)

Table A: Regression results: Guilty about food waste. Table B: Regression results: Food waste reduces foodborne illness. Table C: Regression results: Food waste ensures quality. Table D: Regression results: Food waste is bad for environment. Table E: Regression results: More food is wasted when buy in bulk. Table F: Regression results: Hard to redu...

Survey questionnaire. (DOC)

The purpose of this study was to 1) better understand the prevalence of a variety of BMPs in the Maumee watershed, 2) identify why farmers choose to adopt certain BMPs, and 3) identify what motivates individual farmer willingness to adopt additional practices on their farm. This information may reveal what, if any, methods may be employed to increa...

The purpose of this study was to 1) investigate farmer decision-making in order to better understand the prevalence of a variety of BMPs in the Maumee watershed, 2) identify why farmers choose to adopt certain BMPs, and 3) identify what motivates individual farmer willingness to adopt additional practices on their farm. This information may reveal...

We investigate the value of a country of origin label (COOL) that separately identifies the geographic location of different stages in a food product's supply chain. We estimate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of U.S. consumers for a packaged cereal product where the key grain ingredient may be grown in one country and processed in a second country (m...

Strip intercropping of corn and soybeans can result in improved corn yields but at the cost of reduced soybean yields. Additionally, machinery and labor costs may be increased with strip cropping due to the use of smaller equipment. We present a systematic comparison of the relative net revenue differences for a large-scale corn-soybean operation u...

I compare the distribution of risk attitudes of farm owners in the United States to nonfarm business owners and the general population using a measure of risk tolerance collected from national surveys. I find that farmers are significantly more tolerant of risk than the general population, though they are significantly less tolerant of risk than no...

Farm to School programs (FTS) have proliferated since the first FTS pilot projects in 1996-1997 (National FTS Network 2011). Research surrounding FTS programs has focused on quantifying the potential benefits for local economies and students’ nutrition, while little research has addressed factors that influence a school’s decision to participate in...

Nine months of isoniazid (9INH) is the gold standard for treatment of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI). This paper compares the effectiveness of 9 months of isoniazid with 4 months of transitional rifampin (9H4R) to alternative therapies, including 9INH, 6 months of isoniazid (6INH) and 6 months of isoniazid with 4 months of transitional rifamp...

Labels address a market failure - asymmetric information - through costly expenditures borne by consumers, firms, and taxpayers. In this review, we explore when mandatory and voluntary labeling policies may be socially optimal. Although the analysis ostensibly revolves around simple comparisons of labeling costs and the subsequent benefits from imp...

We study postpartum decisions about paid work and breastfeeding using a simultaneous equations model. For our sample of higher socioeconomic status mothers, we find a joint decision process for three sets of decisions modeled: work leave duration and duration of any, as well as of exclusive, breastfeeding, and daily work hours and daily breastfeedi...

We analyze recent and intended transactions of used farm equipment and find the quality of buyers' relationships with local equipment dealers influences whether their most recent purchase came from an Internet source and whether they will consider future purchases from Internet sources. We find local dealers who provide excellent parts and repair s...

We analyse how age and cognitive skills are related to risk tolerance among respondents to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth between 1993 and 2006. Older individuals display lower risk tolerance than younger individuals, though as the panel ages from their early thirties to their mid-forties, differences in risk tolerance between the oldest...

Human vaccines against several common foodborne pathogens are being developed and could substantially alter consumer and producer behaviour in the markets for foods commonly afflicted by these pathogens. To understand the possible impacts of such an innovation, we derive and calibrate a partial‐equilibrium model using parameters for consumer vaccin...

Vaccines against several common foodborne pathogens are being developed and could substantially alter the policy tools available to address foodborne illness. However, little analysis is available to suggest how social welfare would be affected by consumer and industry responses to these new vaccines. To address this void, we use stated-preference...

We find sale prices and net revenues received by sellers in the Midwestern club-pig market are higher at traditional face-to-face auctions than at comparable Internet auctions. The comparison overcomes endogenous selection issues that commonly plague such analyses by using data from sellers that allocated pigs to both markets based on exogenous dif...

The US Department of Agriculture applies a cost-of-illness approach to value reductions in morbidity, which may understate the projected benefits from proposed food-safety improvements by ignoring costs such as pain, suffering and worry. We use a national survey with a hypothetical food-choice experiment to estimate a more comprehensive measure of...

Return to work is associated with diminished breastfeeding. Although more mothers breastfeed after returning to work compared to a decade ago, research has not documented the variations in breastfeeding initiation and duration based on full-time and part-time (less than 35h/week) work status. In this study, we clarify these differences. Longitudina...

Rising female labor force participation in the United States may interfere with achievement of the nation’s breastfeeding goals. Meanwhile the importance of breastfeeding in developed countries is increasingly emphasized. In 1997, the American Academy of Pediatrics increased the recommended minimum duration for breastfeeding from 6 to 12 months bas...

Results of a nationally representative survey of US farmers link previously validated survey measures of risk aversion and interpersonal trust to farmers’ intended use of online venues for transacting used equipment. Other factors affecting online purchase propensity includes the quality of farmers’ relationships with local equipment dealerships. U...

Brian E. Roe and David R. Just focus on internal and external validity in economics research and balance between experiments, field experiments, natural experiments and field data. Validity within empirical economics is generally concerned with whether a particular conclusion or inference represents a good approximation to the true conclusion or in...

Data from the Infant Feeding Practices Study II (IFPS II) are used to examine the effect of work status on breastfeeding initiation and duration. IFPS II, conducted in 2005-2007, is a longitudinal study of women from late pregnancy through their infant's first year of life and is a follow-up study to IFPS I, conducted in 1992-1993. For this study...

Payments for environmental services (PES) schemes have become an increasingly accepted and popular mode for governmental and non-governmental agencies to use in addressing local and regional declines in ecosystem services. In PES schemes, payments can either be tied to indicators of actions for service provision or to indicators of the generated se...

Professional poker players’ behavior in high-stakes, televised tournaments is significantly more conservative than that prescribed by risk-neutral models of dynamic optimization for decisions to call or fold after final ‘river’ bets. Had players adhered to a risk-neutral dynamically-optimal decision rule in these decisions they would have folded le...

Using a model of vertical product differentiation, we show under what institutional circumstances welfare gains will be maximized as economies integrate and harmonize (mutually recognize) their (each other's) labeling and certification policies for credence goods. Specifically, we show that harmonized mandatory, exclusive discrete labeling will not...

Payments for environmental services (PES) schemes have become an increasingly accepted and popular mode for governmental and non-governmental agencies to use in addressing local and regional declines in ecosystem services. A defining characteristic of performance payments, a sub-category of PES schemes, is the linking of individual payments to envi...

Techniques such as neuroimaging and molecular genetics are increasingly used to investigate economic theory, decision making behavior and personality traits related to economic behavior (e.g., risk attitudes, reward dependence). The generalizability of this research is ultimately limited, however, if the subjects participating in such studies are n...

With recent advances in understanding of the neuroscience of risk taking, attention is now turning to genetic factors that may contribute to individual heterogeneity in risk attitudes. In this paper we test for genetic associations with risk attitude measures derived from both the psychology and economics literature. To develop a long-term prospect...

Using a model of vertical product differentiation, we analyze the welfare gains from economic integration when countries harmonize their eco-labeling and certification policies for environmental credence goods. Specifically, we show that harmonized mandatory, exclusive discrete labeling will not maximize the gains from economic integration, i.e., t...

Background: Millions of older individuals cope with physical limitations, cognitive changes, and various losses such as bereavement that are commonly associated with aging. Given increased vulnerability to various health problems during aging, work displacement might exacerbate these due to additional distress and to possible changes in medical co...

This paper explores the consequences of cognitive dissonance, coupled with time-inconsistent preferences, in an intertemporal decision problem with two distinct goals: acting decisively on early information (vision) and adjusting flexibly to late information (flexibility). The decision maker considered here is capable of manipulating information to...

Advances in biomedical technology have irrevocably jarred open the black box of human decision making, offering social scientists the potential to validate, reject, refine and redefine the individual models of resource allocation that form the foundation of modern economics. In this paper we (1) provide a comprehensive overview of the biomedical me...

Return to work is associated with diminished breastfeeding intensity and duration. Although more mothers breastfeed after returning to work now than earlier, research has not documented the strategies that mothers use for combining paid work and breastfeeding or their effect on breastfeeding outcomes. This study examined which strategies are associ...

Two opposing viewpoints exist in the literature; some suggest consumers are unconcerned and do not desire any genetically modified labeling, while others indicate the opposite. The mixed results may be because consumers make finer distinctions than surveys have called for, and have evaluation schemes sensitive to information about the benefits and...

The labelling of genetically modified (GM) foods is an important policy issue, as consumers' attitudes towards these foods appear to be quite sensitive to information about their potential benefits and risks. Because it is difficult for labels to differ across consumers, differences in reactions to label information could lead to conflicts across c...

We provide a systematic examination of the differences between Internet and in-person auction prices for used tractors. A hedonic model estimated with transactions pooled between eBay and in-person auctions reveals statistically distinct price surfaces for the two auction venues and predicts significantly lower prices for comparable equipment sold...

Using a model of vertical product differentiation, we show under what institutional circumstances welfare gains will be maximized as economies integrate and harmonize labeling and certification policies for credence goods. Specifically, we show that harmonized mandatory, exclusive discrete labeling will not maximize the gains from economic integrat...

Increasingly, foods are marketed as "locally grown." We use stated preference data from a choice-based conjoint instrument to address two issues surrounding consumer demand for locally produced goods: (1) what is the geographical extent of "local," and (2) is the value consumers place on "local" production distinct from other factors that are often...

The material contained herein is supplementary to the article named in the title and published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

A model of vertical product differentiation is used to analyze the labeling of credence goods, focusing on the manner by which quality is communicated. The results indicate that firms prefer private labeling options. In addition, firms may hire private certifiers as well as paying for mandated government labels when the government's quality benchma...

We use economic experiments to examine the nature of relational trading under a menu of incomplete contracts ranging from the repeat purchase mechanism of Klein and Leffler (1981) to highly incomplete contracts that are completely unenforceable by third-parties. Our results suggest that, with barriers to complete contracting, increasing the degree...

We study panel data on three birth-year cohorts to understand the changes in risk tolerance across different age groups. Interval regression models on cross-sectional data for each birth cohort are constructed to investigate how time-invariant factors and macroeconomic events such as September 11, 2001, might influence individuals' risk tolerance....

We use economic experiments to investigate how different contract enforcement regimes affect efficiency and the distribution of surplus in a vertically coordinated market with buyer concentration. We find that if a third party (e.g., government) perfectly enforces contracts, social efficiency is enhanced. We also find that when third-party enforcem...

We analyze responses to a survey designed to elicit consumer reaction to various approaches to labeling genetically modified (GM) foods. Consumers were shown sample labels that differed with respect to claims concerning the presence and potential effects of GM ingredients and the agency that certified these claims. A sample of 1898 US consumers rat...

Two well-known hypotheses from the literature on tournaments are that (1) tournaments can filter out common shocks thereby reducing agentsÂ’ risk exposure; and (2) disincentive effects can arise when a tournament scheme is administered on a group of mixed ability agents. While handicapping and/or the creation of homogeneous groups have been suggest...

The material contained herein is supplementary to the article named in the title and published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, May 2007, Volume 89, Issue 2.

Experimental economics is used to investigate two important hypotheses proposed in the economics literature on tournaments. Specifically, we test for a hypothesized “disincentives effect” which can occur in tournaments with mixed ability agents. We also test the well known hypothesis that, when common shocks are an important source of risk, tournam...

We estimate willingness to pay (WTP) to operate under two types of contracts—tournaments (Ts) and fixed performance-standard contracts (F). Our results are consistent with the notion that subjects having social preferences for fairness and care about risk. That is, when subjects experience greater inequity under tournaments relative to fixed perfor...

Greater attention has been paid to understanding differences between individual and group decision-making in economics in recent years. While great strides have been made in understanding the relative cognitive ability of each, differences in preferences are less well understood. This study examined preferences for risk individually and in groups o...

Increasingly, grocery stores are marketing foods differentiated as locally produced. Freshness and taste are obvious reasons for consumer preference for these goods, but also important may be home-bias. Whatever the motive, there is substantial evidence that some consumers are willing to pay premium prices for food characterized as locally produced...