Increasing knowledge and understanding through data visualization
By Glynn Tonsor and Justin Bina
It is often said you cannot manage what you do not measure which may lead to increased focus in information gathering such as producers keeping more refined records and production budgets or consumers watching their expenses more intently. In the current era of elevated inflation and associated higher purchase prices facing both producers and consumers, the suggest to measure and manage expenses is certainly prudent. What is perhaps less appreciated yet also important is that information only have value if it is understandable and accessible to support increased knowledge and ultimately improved decision-making. In this spirit, this article highlights a new dashboard resource designed to increase knowledge and ultimately decision-making.
The new dashboard is the latest resource incorporated into the Meat Demand Monitor (MDM) project which is based at Kansas State University and funded in-part by the pork and beef checkoff programs. Each month since February of 2020 a nationally representative survey of over 2,000 U.S. residents has been conducted forming the data underpinning the MDM project. While each month short summary reports are provided highlighting current national status on several meat consumption, demand, and associated factors, these reports masks changes over both time and geographic space. Accordingly, Justin Bina (current PhD student at K-State) led creation of a new online dashboard that allows interested parties to easily “see” differences both over time and geographic region. The MDM dashboard is cross-linked on top of the main MDM, AgManager.info webpage.
We now will consider the 2nd quarter of 2022 to illustrate how the dashboard works and what it reveals. First consider the wide interest in U.S. diets including Vegan, Vegetarian, and Flexitarian. It is useful to note nationally that 70% self-declare to regularly consume meat, 12% are Flexitarian or Semi-Vegetarian, and 11% are Vegan Vegetarian or Vegetarian. Since the MDM project was launched the majority of U.S. residents indicate they regularly consume meat. However by using two simple drop-down lists and selecting the time period (Quarter 2 2022) and metric (Share Regularly Consumes Meat) of interest, this national pattern masks substantial variation across states as quickly revealed in the following figure that is easily downloadable from the dashboard.
The dashboard is designed to sort states that have over 30 observations available for the time period and metric of interest into four separate buckets (quartiles) that are color coded from light purple (lowest values or bottom 25% of states) to dark purple (highest values or top 25% of states). Here 25% of the plotted states have 67% or less of their residents selecting a regular meat consumer diet description while a separate 25% of states have 78% or more of their residents making this declaration. As the user scrolls over the color-delineated states the number of observations (survey data points) and associated metric value appear. Here Kentucky and West Virginia are identified as two states where 82% self-declare to regularly consume meat while Utah comes in at 52%. Generalizing across states to broader regions, the Eastern Cornbelt and Upper Midwest have larger resident shares indicating they regularly consume meat. Users can easily adjust the dashboard’s metric selection to similarly see patterns in Flexitarian, Vegan, etc. diets.
Going beyond differences in diet declarations, the MDM project captures information on the relative importance of 12 factors (Taste, Freshness, Safety, Price, Nutrition, Health, Appearance, Convenience, Hormone/Antibiotic-Free, Animal Welfare, Origin/Traceability, and Environmental Impact) in protein purchasing decisions. Narrowly, this list of 12 factors is presented and respondents indicate the four most important and four least important factors. This reveals relative importance as summarized nationally each month with the following figure being an example as included in the base August MDM report. For instance, in August nationally Taste was 1.4 times as important as Price while Convenience was 3.7 times as important as Origin/Traceability or Environmental Impact.
Consistent since the MDM project was launched, this reveals Taste is one of the most important factors in U.S. resident decisions to purchase protein. Building upon this, the dashboard quickly reveals wide geographic variation across states. For instance, selecting Quarter 2 2022 and Important Value – Taste produces the following figure.
In Oregon, 44% of respondents indicate Taste if one of the four most important factors versus 69% in Oklahoma. More broadly, the Midwest and Eastern Cornbelt regions have a higher prevalence of Taste being a top consideration. This may indicate the Midwest and Cornbelt regions are worthy of elevated focus by those positioning protein products based on taste.
In contrast to Taste, Environmental Impact regularly is one of the lower ranking factors in decisions to purchase protein. To be clear, this is not to say the Environmental considerations do not matter but rather when forced to reveal relative importance given the 12 presented factors Environmental considerations are less often top factors. This national summary statement is augmented by the following dashboard figure.
Here these is less of a clear, regionally-delineated pattern in importance of Environmental Impact. This may suggest there are minority of residents in each state who would be responsive to product positioning around Environmental Impact without a clearly identified region to “target” corresponding products or messaging efforts.
Recognizing persistent interest in consumer spending for at-home and away-from-home dining the following two figures for quarter 2 of 2022 can similarly be obtained using this dashboard.
Weekly spending for at-home food averaged $112 nationally in the 2nd quarter and ranged from $94 in Hawaii (which can be seen by zooming out from the default presentation of the lower 48 states) to $130 in Utah. Considering only the four most populated states, the dashboard quickly provides the following estimates: California ($118), Texas ($111), Florida ($116), and New York ($112). Meanwhile, weekly spending for away-from-home food averaged $67 nationally in the 2nd quarter and ranged from $40 in Nebraska to $99 in Utah. Considering only the four most populated states, the dashboard quickly provides the following estimates: California ($82), Texas ($74), Florida ($67), and New York ($76).
Circling back to the motivation for this dashboard, modern partnerships between the livestock industry and academia have higher influence when they keep up with the times. Here, “the times” include modern technical ability to support online dashboards aiding in data visualization at a time when societal interest for information seems insatiable. While this short article introduces the new MDM dashboard we hope this example motivates other similar efforts to ultimately increase knowledge and subsequently decision-making.
In a separate article we will similarly provide a summary of more refined insights the dashboard provides into pork consumption and demand patterns. Notes
1. Those interested in related details may find this recent article by Drs. Glynn Tonsor and Jayson Lusk worth reading: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0309174022001115
2. When a state has fewer than 30 observations available it is not color-coded (remains white) and no information is shown in the requested map shown on the dashboard’s “Home’ page. A full set of underlying data, regardless of observation size, is available under the “State Summaries” tab at the top of the dashboard.
3. This is consistent with the negative value on Environmental Impact presented in the August MDM report. This negative value indicates that more respondents selected Environmental Impact as a bottom-four factor than the number who selected it as a top-four factor.
