Estimating the prevalence of child labour in the cocoa industry via indirect elicitation methods: a mixed-methods study

This paper proposes new estimates of child labor use in Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa farms that are certified free of child labor. The study relies on list experiments (LE) to overcome social desirability bias associated with measuring sensitive issues, implemented on a sample of 4,458 Ivorian cocoa farmers. Findings show that 24 percent of them were helped by at least one child under 16 for harvesting and breaking the cocoa pods during the past 12 months, 21 percent for preparing their farm, and 25 percent employed and paid at least one child to perform any task on their cocoa farm. These results are twice as high as those declared by farmers when directly questioning them about their child labor use. This study provides evidence that the LE method, while more cognitively demanding than the direct questioning method, can be successfully understood by populations with low levels of education. Findings further show that, in this setting, the LE estimates are robust to specific LE design changes.

The objective in this chapter is to review the history of slave labour in the cocoa industry, including forced labour and unpaid child labour, to illustrate how governments often collaborate with the cocoa industry to create and perpetuate these abuses. Slavery in the cocoa industray is a serious form of food crime affecting husdreds of thousands of workers in the cocoa industry. The chapter traces the history of slavery in the cocoa industry from the arrival of Europeans in the Americas in the late fifteenth century to its contemporary forms in West Africa. It illustrates the often explicit but somemtimes passive complicity of governments in creating and protecting the slave trade in the name of protecting both private commericial interests as well as the interests of the State. Some of the proposed solutions to ending the slave trade in the cocoa industry are also discussed.

The correct name is Yah Ariane Bernadette N'Djore and not Ariane Ndiore.

We examined sensitive questions on political trust and regime support in China using indirect methods. We replicated previous list experiment results confirming that a majority trusts the central government despite overreports. We also conducted novel list experiments on trust in local government and support for removal of the presidential term limit and found evidence of overreporting for both. The point estimate for local government also suggests majority trust, but the central government is both more trusted and feared. However, we did not find evidence of majority support for removing the term limit at the time of the removal, indicating that the public may negatively evaluate government, albeit indirectly, in some circumstances. Last, examining self-monitoring, a personality trait for examining social desirability, we found that it only influenced overreporting trust in the central government. The results reveal meaningful variation in political trust and regime support in the world’s largest authoritarian society.

Gambling-related harm (GRH) significantly impacts health-related quality of life (HRQoL), though its measurement remains challenging due to varied methodologies. This study synthesises existing research on HRQoL effects of gambling, highlighting the complementary strengths of direct and indirect elicitation methods. We reviewed studies measuring GRH's impact on HRQoL, focusing on the maximum effect of severe problems and the shape of the impact curve across the harm spectrum. Results revealed consistent maximum HRQoL disutility of approximately 0.45 for severe gambling problems in direct elicitation studies, while indirect methods showed scaling that implies an arguably implausible maximum. We propose a novel hybrid approach that leverages the strengths of both methods: using direct elicitation to establish the maximum impact and indirect methods to determine the relative impacts across the harm spectrum. This approach mitigates attribution biases in direct measures for lower levels of harm while still benefiting from their ability to accurately capture the impact of gambling at severe levels. To assess lower levels of impact, it uses relative scaling from indirect methods that better reflect how quality of life changes as harms accumulate. Our final best-of-both-worlds estimate synthesises available evidence of GRH's impact on HRQoL, grounded in recognised public health metrics.

: This case study was conducted to identify ethical aspect of chocalate industry which related to the used of child labour in farming and harvesting process in West Africa region. The case study identified the issue through secondary data collected from online resources. It is a descriptive article to describe the condition of unethical issues by employing children in the cocoa plantation and factory. It is a giant industry which involved giant companies and big market as well as huge number of the customers. However the benefit was not always distributed to all of the participants or contributors of the industry. Especially for those who work at the cocoa plantation in west Africa region. There are two parties which raised the ethical issues of employing child labour in the chocalate industry, the supporting and contrary parties. It is a dilemma. Both sides have strong argument to deal with the issue and the method to solve it. However it could be concluded the child labor are increased because of four main problems, poverty,education, culture and political issue. In many case these issues are combined to contributed in the used of child labour. In conclusion it needs comprehensive programs involved all the stakeholders of the chocolate industry to take the responsibility to improve the quality of life of the child and families in the west africa especially those who are living around the cocoa plantation. They are just the children who should have the life as the children, similar right as other children around the world have. Keywords: business ethics, child labour, chocolate industry

BackgroundA key component for control of COVID-19 transmission was regular testing using lateral flow device (LFD) tests. However, as home self-testing using LFDs became common practice, there was concern that...

High prevalence of self-reported sexually transmitted infections among older adults in Tanzania: results from a list experiment in a population-representative survey

The problem of child labor in cocoa-producing countries like Ghana and Ivory Coast has been projected into the international limelight due to coverage by notable international media organizations like CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera. The incidence of child labor in the cocoa industry raises legal and ethical issues in the production and manufacturing processes that feed into international trade. This paper explores the international legal framework on child labor under the Minimum Age Convention and the consistency of Ghanaian domestic law with the Convention. It further discusses empirical data collected from Anyinam, a cocoa farming community in the Eastern Region of Ghana and the sustainability programme of Federated Commodities Ltd. (FEDCO), as a private sector responsible business initiative aimed at addressing the problem of child labor from a holistic approach.

List experiments encourage survey respondents to report sensitive opinions they may prefer not to reveal. But, studies sometimes find that respondents admit more readily to sensitive opinions when asked directly. Often this over-reporting is viewed as a design failure, attributable to inattentiveness or other nonstrategic error. This paper conducts an exploratory analysis of such a ‘failed’ list experiment measuring vote buying in the 2019 Nigerian presidential election. We take this opportunity to explore our assumptions about vote buying. Although vote buying is illegal and stigmatized in many countries, a significant literature links such exchanges to patron-client networks that are imbued with trust, reciprocity and long-standing benefits, which might create incentives for individuals to claim having been offered to participate in vote buying. Submitting our data to a series of tests of design, we find that over-reporting is strategic: respondents intentionally reveal vote buying and it’s likely that those who reveal vote buying have in fact being offered to participate in vote buying. Considering reasons for over-reporting such as social desirability and network benefits, and the strategic nature of over-reporting, we suggest that “design failure" is not the only possible conclusion from unexpected list experiment results. With this paper we show that our theoretical assumptions about sensitivity bias affect the conclusions we can draw from a list experiment.

Reports of forced child labour on the cocoa farms of Cote d’Ivoire surfaced in 2000 and quickly became an important business issue for a number of prominent companies. Media coverage and the threat of regulatory action mobilised the international cocoa industry to collaborate with other stakeholders to eliminate the worst forms of child labour from cocoa production. The international cocoa industry moved from a refusal to acknowledge serious labour problems in the global cocoa supply chain, to acknowledgement, and a public commitment to act to address the problems. The experience of the cocoa industry provides a number of lessons for executives, advocates and policy-makers seeking to promote labour standards. Industry participants sought the participation of multiple stakeholders, defined standards by referencing international law, and sought reliable information from the field. This case also demonstrates that pressure on consumer brands, strategic government intervention and geographic concentration facilitates collaborative action. ! Cocoa

This article examines the role of the chocolate industry in the exploitation of children on cocoa farms in Côte d'Ivoire. Under the guise of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the chocolate industry has used its power in the United States to shape policy and program-level initiatives to address the worst forms of child labor, while protecting its business interests and disregarding poverty as the root cause of the problem. The non-profit industrial complex (NPIC) limits the ability of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) to effectively implement programs that address poverty. The increasing CSR funding to INGOs prevents them from holding the chocolate industry accountable. Further, this article discusses the unique contribution of the social work profession in creating the social and structural change required to mitigate the negative consequences of the relationship between CSR and the NPIC.

Social workers can play an essential role in creating global systemic changes that lead to respect for human rights. For this to take place, social workers need to question and critique current policies and propose alternatives. This is a longitudinal case study (2001–2015) of the campaign to eradicate child labor and human rights infractions from the cocoa industry in the West Africa countries of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. The movement to transform the labor practices of the cocoa industry offers a unique insight into the process of a human rights campaign. This study uses the campaign to inform social workers about incorporating effective discursive strategies into a movement’s message. It focuses on the manner in which activists questioned the policies of the cocoa companies and presented alternative methods of doing business. Narratives are created in order to alter public beliefs about the problem in a manner that is in line with stakeholder goals. This process of debating and framing issues in the public sphere results in the social construction of problems and reality (Dahan and Gittens in Journal of Business Ethics, 92, 227–249. doi: 10.1007/s10551-009-0151-8 , 2010). There is “no reality apart from social meanings;” metaphors and stories provide this meaning (Stone, 2011, p. 378). The stakeholders in the cocoa campaign created strategic and competing narratives, designed to garner support for their policies from policy makers. Qualitative framing analysis was employed to explore the stakeholders’ discourse and competing narratives surrounding both the causes of, and solutions to, the Worst Forms of Child Labor (WFCL). Press releases from human rights activists and the cocoa industry were analyzed in order to recount the debate’s history. Findings illustrate that strong resonant frames led to positive changes in the cocoa industry. Stakeholders ultimately transcended the conflict caused by contrasting ideological differences and created policies that indicated a respect for human rights. These policies included using Fair Trade certification, creating supply chain transparency, removing workplace hazards, increasing access to schooling and vocational training, improving the quality of education, and empowering women farmers. These results highlight that activists’ suggestions were incorporated into U.S. government protocols and the cocoa industry’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Policy implications include empowering social workers to advocate for policies that support those most at need, craft frames so that they resonate with the public and policy makers, create alternative policies to the present neoliberal reality, and hold corporations and governments accountable to human rights treaties and conventions. Social workers are encouraged to challenge mindsets that are embedded in a domination mentality and create alternative policies that elevate human rights.

Much of what we know about public service motivation comes from self-report measures. However, self-report questionnaires are vulnerable to social desirability bias due to respondents’ tendencies to answer in a more socially acceptable way. This is a problem as social desirability bias threatens the validity of the measure. This study investigates whether characteristics of national culture influence social desirability bias during surveys on public service motivation. In particular, the impact of social desirability bias is analyzed with two concerns in mind: construct validity and inference validity of public service motivation measures. Experimental survey research (list experiment) is conducted to examine the magnitude of social desirability bias and its associations with national cultures in four countries: Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States. The results show that respondents in both collectivistic countries (Japan and Korea) and individualistic countries (the Netherlands and the United States) are likely to over-report answers on items of public service motivation, although the magnitude and pattern of this bias is stronger and more consistent in collectivistic countries. This study also finds a strong possibility of a moderator effect in correlational analyses in collectivistic countries, but it is doubtful this effect is present in individualistic countries. Overall, we suggest that the effects of social desirability bias should be investigated in public service motivation research, and social desirability bias should be controlled for in future research.

The tourism industry is considered as one of the world's fastest growing economic activities and the largest employer of manpower which generates millions of employment opportunities. Since tourism is a labour intensive industry there is an escalating demand for labour in different sectors of tourism. This demand becomes a critical issue due to reasons such as the scarcity of the trained and skilled human resource, lower salaries and wages and unwillingness among many people to pursue tourism-related employment. As a remedy to this critical issue, child labour has been used frequently. They have been employed in both formal and informal sectors of the tourism industry. This situation is more common in the Sri Lanka tourism industry, especially in remote tourism regions. The main objective of this research was to study the nature of child labour in the tourism industry of the Ampara district of Eastern Tourism region of Sri Lanka. After a preliminary survey, Ulla, Panama North and Panama West GNDs of the Ampara district of Eastern tourism region were selected as the study area. Applying judgment and purposive sampling techniques, 56 child workers and 19 accommodation establishments were selected as the sample. Both quantitative and qualitative methods such as questionnaire surveys, observations, interviews, group discussions and case studies were employed to collect data. The data was analyzed applying both qualitative and quantitative analytical methods. The overall findings of the study are discussed under several subheadings including the socioeconomic and family background of child workers, the existing nature and types of child labour, reasons for selecting of employment linked to tourism, places of work, salaries and wages, the nature of expenditure and problems faced by child workers. The overall findings of this study revealed that child workers have been employed in formal and informal sectors of the tourism industry. All the child labours are in the age range between 15 to 17 years. The most common form of utilizing child labour in the study area is as sellers. Economic burdens at home are the major reasons which draw the children to these jobs. Engaging in different activities, they are able to earn an income ranging from Rs. 3,000 to 15,000 and they have spent this income on different purposes. Since there are many problems related to child labour utilization active policies and plans are timely and significant to alleviate these problems. KEYWORDS : Tourism Industry, Child Labour, Labour utilization