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Nudging healthy food consumption and sustainability in food deserts

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to set forth a theoretical model of consumer decision-making in food desert regions, where healthy food is in short supply. Our model enables theoretical comparison of multiple policy approaches to mitigating food deserts that have heretofore been considered separately: taxing less healthy food, subsidizing healthier food, correcting misperceptions of the cost of food choices, and subsidizing creation of community and home gardens. This latter policy approach enables consumers to achieve higher rates of food security and health benefits, while strengthening the sustainability and resiliency of local urban ecological-economic systems.

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Notes

  1. See Bowman (2007). There is an active debate in the literature regarding alternative conceptualizations of food deserts; see, for instance, Bedore (2013), Donald (2013), and Shannon (2014).

  2. See, e.g., Kopelman (2007).

  3. The U.S. Economic Research Service defines this distance as outside of one mile in urban areas and outside of 10 miles in rural areas (Economic Research Service 2013). Powell et al. (2007) find that poor and minority neighborhoods have fewer chain supermarkets. Moore and Diez Roux (2006) show that there are fewer fresh food and natural food stores, and fewer supermarkets, located in relatively poor neighborhoods. Schuetz et al. (2012, 282) suggest that it is an open question in the literature as to why retail stores are generally reluctant to locate in lower income neighborhoods. As they indicate, retail entrepreneurs may perceive higher operating costs in lower income neighborhoods that reduce expected profits.

  4. See MacDonald and Nelson (1991), Jones and Mustiful (1996), Chung and Myers (1999) and Hendrickson et al. (2006) on this topic of prices in chain-supermarkets being lower than in relatively small grocery stores prevalent in urban neighborhoods.

  5. See Blumenthal and Volpp (2010) and Finkelstein et al. (2011), for instance, for discussion of the mixed literature regarding how impactful greater information may be in motivating dietary changes.

  6. See Barthel and Isendahl (2013).

  7. See Clark et al. (2008).

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Acknowledgments

We thank Editor Henk Folmer and two anonymous reviewers for several comments and suggestions that improved our paper. We also thank Professor Amit Batabyal; session participants at the 2013 New York State Economics Association annual meeting (particularly our discussant, Professor Wisdom Akpalu); and session participants at the 2014 Midwest Economics Association annual meeting (particularly our discussant, Roy Wada) for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Golisano Institute for Sustainability, Rochester Institute of Technology, 111 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA

    Cam Hebda

  2. Department of Economics, Rochester Institute of Technology, 92 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA

    Jeffrey Wagner

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  1. Cam Hebda
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  2. Jeffrey Wagner
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Correspondence to Jeffrey Wagner.

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Hebda, C., Wagner, J. Nudging healthy food consumption and sustainability in food deserts. Lett Spat Resour Sci 9, 57–71 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12076-015-0138-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12076-015-0138-2

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