Investigation of Whether People Are Willing to Pay a Premium for Living in Food Swamps: A Study of Edmonton, Canada

Extensive studies have examined how unfavorable food environments, especially food swamps (neighborhoods with oversaturated unhealthy food sources), influence people’s dietary behaviors and health. Although excess fast-food consumption may have an adverse effect on health, it also benefits consumers due to its convenience, time saving, and affordability. Therefore, people’s preference for an unhealthy food environment is not necessarily negative. Understanding how people value or disvalue unhealthy food environments is a prerequisite for developing effective policies to promote good diet habits and improve public health. Thus, this study adopts spatial hedonic pricing models to estimate people’s willingness to pay to live in food swamps. The results show that people are willing to pay a premium to live in food swamps when taking low income and low healthy-to-unhealthy food ratios into consideration. On average, a household is willing to pay a premium of C$12,309 to reside in a food swamp neighborhood. Potential reasons for the positive willingness to pay among low-income communities and households with relatively limited access to healthy food may include the unaffordability of healthy diets, preference for better tastes, and time saved in fast-food consumption. These findings can help policymakers evaluate the effectiveness of relevant policies and develop targeted strategies to improve the local food environment.