Do the stakes in food safety inspections change outcomes for restaurants in court? The case of New York City's restaurant grading initiative

Background: Raising the stakes of inspections for food safety violations in restaurants by mandating the posting of letter grades at point of sale is one strategy to increase compliance with restaurant inspection regulations. However, there is little evidence about the response of restaurants to the implementation of such programs.

Data: Food safety inspections (n=222,527) of New York City restaurants from December 1, 2007 through March 2, 2014 before and after the implementation of a public grading initiative. Observations, interviews and documents reviews of adjudication hearings are coded for insights into the adjudication process and used in interpreting quantitative findings

Methods: In a regression discontinuity design, OLS regression and linear probability models predict likelihood of changes in inspection scores and grades at adjudication before and after the program was implemented, controlling for city borough and restaurant size.

Results: Restaurants are more likely to have scores reduced and grades improve at adjudication on high stakes inspections that result in grade posting than low stakes inspections that do not. On average, restaurants are successful in getting violations reduced sufficiently to have their grades improve over 40% of the time. Adjudication outcomes for high stakes inspections are sensitive to violation score differences near grade cut-points, in contrast to low stakes inspections.