Slow Traffic, Fast Food: The Effects of Time Lost on Food Store Choice

Panka Bencsik, Lester Lusher and Rebecca Taylor

No 16036, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Time scarcity is one of the strongest correlates of fast food consumption. To estimate the causal effect of time lost on food choice, we match daily store-specific foot traffic data traced via smartphones to plausibly exogenous shocks in highway traffic data in Los Angeles. We find that on days when highways are more congested, individuals are more likely to dine out and less likely to grocery shop. The effects are particularly pronounced for afternoon rush hour traffic. Our results imply a net reduction in healthy food store choice due to time lost.

Keywords: store choice; time constraints; traffic congestion; nutrition; fast food (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I30 J22 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2023-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dcm, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Urban Economics, 2025, 146, 103737

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16036.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Slow traffic, fast food: The effects of time lost on food store choice (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16036

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().