The rapid expansion of the resource-intensive brewing industry has led to U.S. and state-level initiatives to encourage sustainable craft brewing practices. These efforts raise questions about brewers' current brewing practices and the conditions and factors that might influence a brewer's decision to adopt sustainable practices. We conducted an in-depth survey of Iowa craft brewers in 2019 to evaluate current sustainability practices within breweries. In addition, we elicited brewer perceptions regarding consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay for sustainably produced beer. We analyze these factors together with data on brewery production characteristics and the brewer's personal beliefs and demographics. While most breweries in our sample track key environmental metrics to some degree, many of them lack environmental plans. Further, we find significant variation in the degree to which brewers believe there is opportunity to leverage sustainable brewing practices to charge consumers a higher price. We also provide insight on relationships between environmental practices and potential resources provided to breweries. These findings improve our understanding of craft brewers' tradeoffs regarding sustainable brewing practices that could apply more generally to other resource-intensive sectors.

中文翻译：

---

精酿啤酒行业的可持续发展：爱荷华州啤酒商的案例研究

资源密集型酿造业的快速扩张导致美国和州级倡议鼓励可持续的精酿酿造实践。这些努力引发了有关酿酒商当前酿造实践以及可能影响酿酒商采用可持续实践的决定的条件和因素的问题。我们在 2019 年对爱荷华州精酿啤酒商进行了深入调查，以评估啤酒厂当前的可持续发展实践。此外，我们还就消费者对可持续生产的啤酒的偏好和支付意愿进行了调查，得出了酿酒商的看法。我们将这些因素与啤酒厂生产特征的数据以及啤酒商的个人信仰和人口统计数据一起分析。虽然我们样本中的大多数啤酒厂都在某种程度上跟踪了关键的环境指标，但其中许多都缺乏环境计划。此外，我们发现酿酒商认为有机会利用可持续酿造实践向消费者收取更高价格的程度存在显着差异。我们还深入了解环境实践与提供给啤酒厂的潜在资源之间的关系。这些发现提高了我们对精酿啤酒商在可持续酿造实践方面的权衡的理解，这些做法可以更普遍地适用于其他资源密集型行业。