IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/oaefxx/v12y2024i1p2404709.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How did Japanese households change their food purchasing behavior at the initial period of the COVID-19 outbreak?

Author

Listed:
  • Shigeru Matsumoto
  • Tsunehiro Otsuki

Abstract

Fearing the COVID-19 infection, people began to avoid eating out and eating at home. Simultaneously, they began using meal delivery services. Numerous studies have assessed the impact of COVID-19 on various economic activities. However, its effects on food consumption patterns have not yet been fully examined. By analyzing household spending data from 1448 households in Tokyo, Tokai, and Kinki areas of Japan, we observed changes in food spending before and after the pandemic. During the emergency, the share of expenditures on food-away-from-home (FAFH) decreased by 1.8%, the share of expenditures on food-at-home (FAH) increased by 0.5%, and the share of expenditures on food delivery services (FDS) increased by 1.3% for all eligible households. However, the extent of the shift from FAFH to FAH and FDS varied widely across households. Single-person and single-parent households continued to rely on FAFH during the pandemic, whereas parent-child households shifted more to FAH. This suggests that time-constrained households could not prioritize meal preparation even during the pandemic. While various policies have recently been introduced to promote healthy eating at home, our empirical findings suggest that policies to ease household time constraints are simultaneously required for these programs to work.During the COVID-19 pandemic, people spent more time at home, ate out less frequently, and started cooking at home. However, the extent to which eating habits changed during the pandemic varied greatly among households. Households with parents and children substantially shifted towards eating at home, while single-person households and households with single parents continued to eat out during the pandemic. These results indicate that people with limited time found it very challenging to change their eating habits.

Suggested Citation

  • Shigeru Matsumoto & Tsunehiro Otsuki, 2024. "How did Japanese households change their food purchasing behavior at the initial period of the COVID-19 outbreak?," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(1), pages 2404709-240, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:oaefxx:v:12:y:2024:i:1:p:2404709
    DOI: 10.1080/23322039.2024.2404709
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23322039.2024.2404709
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/23322039.2024.2404709?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:oaefxx:v:12:y:2024:i:1:p:2404709. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/OAEF20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.