Journal on Policy and Complex Systems
producers can be difficult ( and likely undesirable ) for a manager . However , the manager should be cautious about allowing relationships with producers to dictate the food hub ’ s sourcing policy at the expense of consumer satisfaction .
This paper described an empirically based ABM of a regional food system in central Iowa , in which the success of the entire system ( including the producers , consumers , and the food hub ) relies on the achievement of potentially conflicting social and economic objectives and the careful balance of meeting both producer and consumer requirements . The experiments described in this paper show how ABM can be used to capture the effects of different sourcing policies on regional food hub consumer and producer participation . The results of these experiments suggest that centralized control via management policies can lead to desired outcomes , but such policies can also have unintended ( and sometimes undesirable ) consequences for system behavior .
In future work , it will be interesting to observe the effects of different sourcing policies on the evolution of the system ’ s consumer persona distribution . For example , if the food hub manager implements a policy that strongly supports the inclusion of low-cost producers , will the price-conscious Frugalist persona become dominant ? Would this strategy drive other personas away from the food hub ? How would this impact the food hub financially ? Is this beneficial for individual producers and consumers , and for the regional food system as a whole ? The ABM can be used to answer these questions .
The ABM will also be further developed to allow for social interactions and information sharing among the consumer agents , and to assess the impact of these interactions on food system metrics . These interactions may be personal ; for example , the consumer agents could discuss their experiences with one another when they pick up their orders from the food hub . Alternatively , the interactions could occur via the food hub ’ s website , through a system of producer ratings . The implications of allowing and / or encouraging communication between consumers would be useful for the food hub manager to understand . ABM is a particularly useful tool for studying the effects of these types of complex interactions on system behavior over time .
References
Adler , P . J . ( 2005 ). Dealing with interviews when creating personas : A practical approach . In J . Buur , & B . Mathews ( Eds .), Proceedings of Student Interaction Design Research Conference , SIDER05 ( pp . 84 – 88 ). Sønderborg : University of Southern Denmark .
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