Commercial and regional brewers are increasingly investing in environmental sustainability equipment that reduces input use, operating costs, and environmental impacts. These technologies often require prohibitively high upfront costs. One potential solution for these brewers is to market their product as sustainable and charge a premium to offset some of the costs. We undertake a stated preference choice experiment targeting a nationally representative sample of beer buyers and elicit preferences for multiple attributes related to environmental sustainability in beer. We find that, on average, beer buyers are willing to pay $0.70/six-pack for beer produced using water and wastewater reduction technologies, $0.85 for carbon reduction practices, and $0.98 for landfill diversion practices, though water sustainability practices appeal to a largest share of beer buyers. We also find that preferences for sustainability attributes are widely distributed among beer drinkers, largely irrespective of sociodemographic characteristics. The positive price premiums across sustainability attributes suggest beer buyers value sustainable brewing, and brewers could attract new consumers by simultaneously communicating their commitment to sustainability and differentiating their product

Although the influence of regulations on economic outcomes has been well documented, few studies have focused on the geography of regulatory burdens. The regulations confronting any supply chain can vary dramatically across legislative jurisdictions, as U.S. policy is enforced by overlapping federal, state, and local governments. We use a unique data set to explore state‐by‐state regulatory variation in U.S. beer supply chains in 2020. We find that the state‐level rules targeted at the beer supply chain vary between 1,177 and 25,399, with the average state implementing 10,212 formal regulatory restrictions.

Consumers habitually support local food and drink, but locally grown products often come from less developed value chains with lower quality control standards; something suppliers must consider. Using data from Michigan craft breweries, we describe the determinants of a brewer's decision to purchase local hops. Utilizing generalized linear models, we determine how factors—including perceived consistency and attitudes towards localness—impact hop purchasing decisions. Results indicate that hop consistency is a leading factor, and beliefs about localness stimulating the economy or helping the environment may not be enough to drive local purchasing.

Food regulations protect consumer health, mitigate environmental concerns, and promote animal welfare, but they can also hinder innovation, limit entrepreneurship, and generate higher consumer prices. This study examines the number of federal and state regulatory restrictions affecting the beef, pork, poultry, sheep, goat, and seafood industries, including processing, wholesale distribution, and retail sales. We also examine state regulatory heterogeneity associated with animal protein products. Our results suggest that protein supply chains have become subject to tens of thousands of regulatory constraints over the past half-century. We also find substantial heterogeneity in the number of state restrictions associated with animal production, indicative of large differences in the amount of administrative law across states. Results highlight that the patchwork approach of U.S. food policy creates overlapping, cumbersome guidelines for manufacturers, and given the interconnectivity of modern food supply chains, the framework can create additional hurdles for interstate commerce.

Attractive displays can stimulate sales in the retail setting. With most plants still sold in physical retail outlets, the influence of display layout on visual behavior and purchasing is of interest to academicians and practitioners. Using a within-subjects in-lab experiment and eye tracking technology, we explored how the cognitive load imposed by horticultural retail displays affects visual attention and choice. Display layouts were varied for six choice tasks in which participants indicated their most preferred alternative and their likelihood-to-purchase that alternative. Our study suggests that as the number of plant genera increases, perceived display complexity increases, and participants ignore a larger percentage of the products in the display while spending a lower percentage of their gaze sequence fixated on their choice product. Implications for retailers include increasing horizontal merchandising, reducing vertical merchandising, and diversifying the product mix in the display. Index words: cognitive load, eye tracking, marketing, retail displays, complexity. Species used in this study: Buddleia davidii Franch. ‘Little Nugget', Campanula portenschlagiana Resholt (Roem. & Schult.), Coreopsis grandiflora L. ‘Sunburst', Echinacea purpurea Moench ‘Delicious Candy', Hydrangea paniculata L. ‘Limelight', Lupinus spp. L. ‘Tutti Fruitti', Sempervivum cv. L, Spirea japonica L. ‘Double Play Red'.