Personality traits and preferences for specialty coffee: Results from a coffee shop field experiment.

The market for specialty coffee is growing as consumer preferences for high quality coffee become more complex. Identifying the sources of heterogeneity in consumer preferences for specialty coffee is essential to optimizing producer marketing strategies to ensure they both fully capitalize on and satisfy consumer demand. One source of increasing interest is consumer personality profiles, specifically those categorized by the Big Six personality traits. We use the Midlife Development Inventory to investigate the effect of consumer personality traits on willingness to pay for coffee produced by farmer cooperatives. Results from a field experiment using a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism indicate that, on average, consumers are willing to pay a $1.31 premium for a cup of pour over coffee that was produced by a cooperative member farmer. Consumers exhibiting the extraversion and conscientiousness traits were, on average, willing to pay an even higher premium while those with higher levels of agency had a lower willingness to pay. Results further highlight that sociodemographic characteristics do not always drive consumer purchase decisions and, in the absence of significant sociodemographic influence, intrinsic consumer characteristics like personality traits can better explain preferences.

Do Coffee Farmers Benefit in Food Security from Participating in Coffee Cooperatives? Evidence from Southwest Ethiopia Coffee Cooperatives.

BACKGROUND: Most coffee in Ethiopia is produced by smallholder farmers who face a daily struggle to get sufficient income but also to feed their families. At the same time, many smallholder coffee producers are members of cooperatives. Yet, literature has paid little attention to the effect of cooperatives on combating food insecurity among cash crop producers including coffee farmers. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to investigate how coffee cooperative membership may affect food security among coffee farm households in Southwest Ethiopia. METHODS: The study used cross-sectional household data on income, expenditure on food, staple food production (maize and teff), and utilization of improved inputs (fertilizer and improved seed) collected from 256 randomly selected farm households (132 cooperative members and 124 nonmembers) and applied an inverse probability weighting (IPW) estimation to assess the impact of cooperative membership on food security. RESULTS: The result revealed that cooperative membership has a positive and significant effect on staple food production (maize and teff) and facilitated technological transformation via increased utilization of fertilizer and improved seeds. Nonetheless, the effect on food expenditure and income could not be confirmed. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest a trade-off between coffee marketing and input supply functions of the cooperatives, impairing their true food security impact from the pooled income and production effect.

Cooperativas de catadores de materiais recicláveis como alternativa à exclusão social e sua relação com a população de rua / Cooperatives of waste pickers as an alternative to social exclusion and its relationship with the homeless population

A informalidade no trabalho, que marca a realidade da maioria das relações de trabalho brasileiras, somada às características encontradas na população de rua, constituem o pano de fundo social propenso à geração de formas alternativas de organização do trabalho. A informalidade no trabalho, assim como a população de rua, tem composição e origem acentuadamente heterogênea; assim, torna-se fundamental que qualquer política pública destinada a estes aspectos considere suas especificidades. Neste contexto, surgem as cooperativas de catadores de resíduos sólidos, formadas por antigos catadores de lixo e ex-moradores de rua, como alternativa à informalidade no trabalho e busca pela cidadania, dentro da perspectiva da autogestão. Por meio de uma análise atual e de uma caracterização histórica sobre experiências de cooperativas de catadores brasileiras, buscou-se mostrar a capacidade inclusiva do modelo cooperativista e da relevância das parcerias destas com o poder público e com outros atores sociais. Neste escopo, é fundamental a abordagem de experiências bem sucedidas de catadores que, unidos sob a égide do cooperativismo, com a participação do poder público e/ou independentemente dele û puderam lograr a inclusão social. A autogestão desponta, assim, como alternativa real de trabalho àqueles que se encontram marginalizados pelo sistema formal de trabalho.(AU)