Cyber Food Swamps: Investigating the Impacts of Online-to-Offline Food Delivery Platforms on Healthy Food Choices
Yunke Zhang, Yiran Fan, Peijie Liu, Fengli Xu, Yong Li

TL;DR
This study analyzes how online food delivery platforms influence urban residents' food choices, revealing that expanded online exposure to fast food creates 'cyber food swamps' that impact healthy eating behaviors.
Contribution
It provides large-scale empirical evidence on the impact of online food environments on dietary choices and introduces causal analysis of online exposure effects on healthy food selection.
Findings
Higher online exposure to fast food correlates with increased fast food orders.
Extended online service ranges create larger 'cyber food swamps'.
A 10% increase in fast food restaurant proportion raises fast food ordering probability by 22%.
Abstract
Online-to-offline (O2O) food delivery platforms have greatly expanded urban residents' access to a wide range of food options by allowing convenient ordering from distant food outlets. However, concerns persist regarding the nutritional quality of delivered food, particularly as the impact of O2O food delivery platforms on users' healthy food remains unclear. This study leverages large-scale empirical data from a leading O2O delivery platform to comprehensively analyze online food choice behaviors and how they are influenced by the online exposure to fast food restaurants, i.e., online food environment. Our analyses reveal significant variations in food preferences across demographic groups and city sizes, where male, low-income, and younger users are more likely to order fast food via O2O platforms. Besides, we also perform a comparative analysis on the food exposure differences in…
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Taxonomy
TopicsDigital Marketing and Social Media · Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability
