Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
AFRE
Non Technical Summary
In 2021, over half (53%) of all U.S. food expenditures were purchases of food prepared away from home (FAFH) (USDA ERS, 2022). Yet, much of the existing literature on food demand and nutrition focuses on food prepared at home (FAH). Partially motivated by the absence of timely secondary data, there is an urgent need to understand FAFH consumption patterns and encourage healthier food choices. This is especially true in online settings, where digital food environments and meal delivery services have accelerated FAFH purchasing.The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the increased use of, and reliance on, online food environments (Hobbs, 2020). While only 24% of consumers used online services to order food from restaurants in 2019, 41% used it in 2020 (Edmondson et al., 2021). Online meal orders are expected to grow, as demonstrated by the explosion of online U.S. food delivery platforms now valued at $63 billion (Statista, 2022). The food environment in which we make choices impacts consumption habits and public health outcomes (WHO, 2015), as research shows that eating behavior, satisfaction, and satiety change based on the eating location (Hendricks et al., 2021). Indeed, frequent meals away from home have been linked to reduced diet quality (Binkley and Liu, 2019), increased caloric intake (USDA ERS, 2010), and obesity (Altman et al., 2015), among other chronic health conditions. It is unlikely that the trend towards FAFH will reverse, creating an urgent need to understand consumer decision-making processes in online FAFH environments and develop strategies to empower and encourage consumers to make healthier FAFH choices (The White House, 2022).This need calls for novel research evaluating which market incentives and policy interventions could promote healthier eating habits in online settings. While there are interventions and food policies that can nudge purchasing and consumption behavior in physical food environments, these conventional methods may not translate one-to-one to digital settings. Most notably, there is potential to incorporate behavioral change techniques into the digital food environments, steering consumers toward healthier meal options without removing freedom of choice (Stephens et al., 2020). Indeed, online food environments can make market interventions and food policies more salient for consumers.This proposed research project fills these gaps in the literature by introducing Meal Clicks, a survey that tracks consumer preferences and demand for FAFH ordered in digital environments over time, while also exploring the healthiness of consumer food choices. FAFH demand fluctuates due to many factors, including generational change, policy shifts, food safety issues, and price changes. Meal Clicks will capture such variation in a realistic and timely manner, informing producers and agribusinesses about current and emerging consumer trends. Along with tracking purchasing habits and demographics, Meal Clicks will also determine the effects of policy and digital interventions that facilitate change in online FAFH demand. In doing so, Meal Clicks will provide policymakers and the food industry with critical information on effective interventions that promote healthier meal choice in FAFH environments.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Partially motivated by the absence of timely secondary data sources, much of the current literature on food demand, preferences, and consumption habits focus on food prepared at home (FAH). In these instances, insights from food prepared away from home (FAFH) are omitted. This shortcoming is problematic as FAFH now accounts for nearly half of all food expenditures (USDA 2021), with digitalization and meal delivery services increasing FAFH consumption through online ordering.The food environment in which we make choices has a large impact on consumption, but there is an absence of timely and accurate data that can causally identify FAFH demand and purchasing patterns. To understand the effects of increased FAFH consumption, it is important to determine the extent to which online FAFH ordering is increasing, understand food choice in online purchasing settings, and identify the short- and long-term health consequences of these decisions. There is also a need of new research evaluating which market incentives and policy interventions are most effective in promoting healthy eating behavior in online settings. While there are interventions and food policies that can nudge purchasing and consumption behavior in physical food environments, these conventional methods may not translate to digital settings.This proposed research project identifies these opportunities by introducing Click Meals, a survey that tracks consumer preferences and demand for FAFH ordered in digital environments. Along with tracking purchasing habits, the survey also determines the effects of various interventions that facilitate change in FAFH demand for healthier meals and dietary outcomes. The specific objectives are to:Objective 1: Develop and introduce a new consumer survey, named Meal Clicks, to track consumer demand and the healthfulness of consumer dietary choices for FAFH ordered online using food basket-based experiments.Objective 2: Determine the link between changes in online FAFH demand, internal characteristics (e.g., demographics, lifestyle and health status), and external factors (e.g., news stories, changes in prices and other economic conditions that affect the food industry).Objective 3. Determine the impact of food policy options (e.g., nutritional labels, SNAP, calorie-based tax) and just-in-time (JIT) digital interventions (e.g., food swap recommendations, basket healthiness feedback, personalized nutritional advice) implemented in online FAFH ordering environments on consumer demand and the healthfulness of consumer dietary choices.Objective 4. Determine the impact of multicomponent interventions in FAFH online ordering environments on consumer demand and the healthfulness of consumer dietary choices using an informed experimental design.The findings from this project will offer insights on ways to optimize digital meal ordering platforms and contribute to the transition to healthier FAFH consumption. This will lead to a more competitive food industry and support the development of effective policies that strengthen consumer empowerment and access to healthy food choices (The White House, 2022).
Project Methods
We will develop a novel consumer survey that tracks preferences and demand for online FAFH. The survey, named Meal Clicks, will be developed and implemented by the project personnel and delivered on a tri-monthly basis for three years. Meal Clicks will include a FAFH-BBCE in a mock-up online meal ordering platform. The FAFH-BBCE will be developed to closely mimic the consumer experience when ordering meals online. Respondents will freely compose their food baskets by selecting the quantity of each selected food item, as in actual meal ordering situations. By allowing consumers to select food items and their respective quantities, this study extends the work by Caputo and Lusk (2022), estimating complementarity and substitution patterns between food items while also accounting for satiation effects.One of the key features of the BBCE approach is that the data can be analyzed using various modeling approaches: random utility models (multinomial logit model, mixed logit model, etc.) (Caputo and Lusk, 2019), AIDS models (e.g., Piggott and Marsh 2011), Multivariate Logistics (MVL) models (Song and Chintagunta 2006; Caputo and Lusk 2022) and multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) models (Bhat 2008). Estimating these models provides insights into consumer demand for online FAFH while identifying own- and cross-price elasticities to explore substitution and complementarity patterns between food items. We will explore these modeling approaches and extend the MDCEV proposed by Bhat (2008) to include a non-additively separable (N-AS) utility function (Bhat et al. 2015; Pellegrini et al. 2021). Using the estimates from these models, we will then determine and track the healthiness of consumer dietary choices over time. To this end, we will follow two steps (see Section 2.3): (i) use the Nutritionix website (link) to derive the nutrient content for each of the dishes included in the BBCE (calories, fat, carbohydrates, etc.) and (ii) multiply the probability of ordering each item with the selected nutritional components to compute the average nutritional composition for each survey edition.The remaining survey data will be analyzed using various statistical techniques, such as exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis. The primary goal of this analysis is to segment consumers according to the main determinants of food choice: lifestyle, health status, food values and demographics. Regression analysis will also be employed to measure the impact of internal characteristics (e.g., demographics, lifestyles, etc.) on consumer demand for different FAFH product items. Results from these analyses will then be linked to the FAFH-BBCE data to determine how internal characteristics influence consumer preferences and demand for FAFH. To explore how external factors influence FAFH consumption behavior, we will explore whether the FAFH-BBCE results are affected by changes in actual market prices.