PEI is a province whose primary agricultural export is potatoes. As a result of this, you are hard pressed to find a road on the island that doesn't have at least one roadside stand selling the illustrious tuber .

What I find great about these potato stands is that none have people working them. They are all set up with honesty boxes.  There is a sign sitting beside the money box telling you what the price is. You, as the honest consumer, are expected to simply deposit the proper amount and take your bag of spuds.

While this seems awfully trustworthy (and I think folks in PEI are trustworthy for a good reason), it is probably just a simple risk management exercise on the part of the farmers.

Risk management is a pretty straightforward calculation involving the following variables:

What is the value of the potatoes being protected?
[Cart full of potatoes or cash equivalent: Let's say $30-$50]

How vulnerable are the spuds? [Totally]

Who are the potential threat agents? [Probably some tourist that is lacking moral judgment.]

How often do the perps usually steal potatoes? [Not very often]

How much would it cost to protect the potatoes? [a minimum wage worker]

It's easy to see that if you are only selling 10 bags of spuds a day (total of $30) and if you are paying someone $8.20/hour to watch them, the math doesn't make sense.

I would be interested to know what the loss rate is for the average roadside stand but I bet it is pretty low.

A Threat Risk Analysis (TRA) on an information system isn't any more complicated than protecting potatoes, the variables are just a little trickier and the stakes higher.