Food Store Choices of Poor Households: A Discrete Choice Analysis of the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS)

Abstract

Policymakers are pursing initiatives to increase food access for low-income households. However, due in part to previous data deficiencies, there is still little evidence supporting the assumption that improved food store access will alter dietary habits, especially for the poorest of U.S. households. This article uses the new National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) to estimate consumer food outlet choices as a function of outlet type and household attributes in a multinomial mixed logit model. In particular, we allow for the composition of the local retail food environment to play a role in explaining household store choice decisions and food acquisition patterns. We find that households are willing to pay more per week in distance traveled to shop at superstores, supermarkets, and fast food outlets than at farmers markets and smaller grocery stores, and that willingness to pay is heterogeneous across income group, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participation, and other household and food environment characteristics. Our results imply that policymakers should consider incentivizing the building of certain outlet types over others, and that Healthy Food Financing Initiatives should be designed to fit the sociodemographic composition of each identified low-income, low-access area in question.

Does a nutritious diet cost more in food deserts?

“…We use this definition for two reasons. First, this definition is commonly used in the literature (e.g., Taylor and Villas‐Boas, ; Thomsen et al., ) and allows us to compare our results to existing studies. Second, this definition is used for policy targeting.…”

Healthy Food Incentive Impacts on Direct-to-Consumer Sales: A Michigan Example

“…Next, we include a proxy for food access by using the share of people in a county who commute to work using public transportation (USCB, 2016). Our motivation here is that there are mixed results from studies considering the impact of food access on participation in farmers markets (Sadler, 2016;Taylor & Villas-Boas, 2016). We control for population (USDOC BEA, 2016) in place of The motivation for the design of our first model is to allow us to distinguish between the influence of the DUFB program and SNAP on DTC sales.…”

“…Location may not be the only factor impacting whether or not low-income households patronize farmers markets. For example, Taylor and Villas-Boas (2016) found that low-income households travel further to shop at large grocers, superstores, and fast food outlets compared to farmers markets. One explanation for this finding is that consumers have preferences for processed and fast food that may outweigh desires to access a greater variety of locally produced fresh fruits and vegetables.…”

A Mixed Bag: The Hidden Time Costs of Regulating Consumer Behavior

“…First, food shopping is a common, frequent, and arguably necessary behavior. In the U.S., consumers purchase the majority of food at grocery stores, supermarkets, and superstores (Taylor and Villas-Boas, 2016a), with the average adult grocery shopping once every 7.2 days and spending 44 minutes in-store per trip (Hamrick et al, 2011). This aggregates to 11.9 billion grocery shopping trips (and checkout experiences) and 8.7 billion hours in-store each year in the U.S. 4 Given the extensive literature showing that shopping convenience impacts where and what people purchase to eat, 5 and the literature showing that consumers dislike and actively avoid long wait times (Larson, 1987;Tom and Lucey, 1995;Van Riel et al, 2012;Craig et al, 2016), it is vital that we understand the trade-offs between convenient behaviors and environmentally-friendly behaviors in healthy food acquisition.…”