Indicators to compare and assess the institutional strength of voluntary sustainability standards in the global coffee industry

Abstract

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “The Voluntary Coffee Standard Index (VOCSI). Developing a composite Index to Assess and Compare the Institutional Strength of Mainstream Voluntary Sustainability Standards in the Global Coffee Industry” (Dietz et al., 2018) in press) [1]. The VOCSI presents the most detailed comparison all major voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) that currently exist in global coffee production. This Data in Brief contains the database that we have generated to set up the VOCSI. We publish this dataset in order to facilitate further critical or extended analyzes.

Mainstreamed voluntary sustainability standards and their effectiveness: Evidence from the Honduran coffee sector

“…This system used the weakest and strongest examples of regulation on a given topic as lower and upper bounds (representing “weak” and “strong” regulations) and determined empirical cutoffs between categories that allowed for an even distribution of regulatory strictness. An extended description of the procedures that were also used to generate a Voluntary Coffee Standard Index (VOCSI), along with the full codebook, can be found in Dietz et al (2018a,b). 9 This coding procedure resulted in the comparative stringency results shown in Table 2, which constitute our operationalization of the independent variable for H2a/b on regulatory stringency.…”

“…Finally, to operationalize H5 on auditing frequency and H6 on auditing oversight, we again built on Dietz et al (2018a,b) who scored VSS according to their stringency in a variety of auditing criteria using the same methodology as described above. For auditing presence, we constructed an average of three indicators – auditing sample size, yearly audits, and the use of unannounced audits – that indicate a stronger presence of auditors in the field.…”

“…4C, Common Code for the Coffee Community; FT, Fairtrade; org, organic; RA, Rainforest Alliance. Source : Dietz et al (2018a,b). …”

“…9 9 It should be noted that we did not take the weights derived from the Delphi method described in Dietz et al (2018a,b) into account, but rather focused on the inductive coding results alone given that we analyzed individual requirements rather than aggregating them.…”