Shopping Frequency, Fresh Produce Consumption, and Food Retail Environment

Abstract

As households shop less frequently, food decay makes perishable food consumption more costly. Therefore, I hypothesize that shopping frequency is an important factor of household food choice. I test this hypothesis using an instrumental variables approach on a system of equations using household panel data and conclude that fresh produce consumption and shopping frequency are jointly chosen. Positive causal impacts are found in both directions. However, the causal impact of shopping frequency on fresh produce consumption is of modest magnitude. Therefore, policy initiatives that improve access to food retailers with the intention of increasing healthful food consumption — by inducing households to shop more frequently at store formats that carry fruits and vegetables — may be ineffective even if the policy is successful at increasing household shopping frequency to those stores.