Investigation of whether people are willing to pay a premium for living in food swamps: A study of Edmonton, Canada

Abstract Background: 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 environment is a prerequisite for developing effective policies to promote good diet habits and improve public health. Thus, the main objective of this research is to investigate people’s willingness to pay (WTP) for living in unhealthy food environments.Methods: To attain our primary objective, we adopt spatial hedonic pricing models to examine the impact of food swamps on housing prices and estimate the corresponding WTP through an empirical analysis in Edmonton, Canada. Three different definitions are used to identify food swamps. Definition 1 considers only the high availability of unhealthy food outlets. Definition 2 adds the condition of a low level of healthy food ratio to define food swamps. Definition 3 further incorporates the criterion of low-income to define food swamps.Results: Our main finding is that people are willing to pay extra to live in a food swamp neighborhood when taking low healthy-to-unhealthy food ratio and low-income level into consideration. Specifically, a household is willing to pay a premium of C$12,309 to reside in a food swamp neighborhood with the constraints of low healthy outlets ratio and low-income level. Conclusions: Our results indicate that overall, there is a net benefit associated with residing close to food swamps. Potential reasons for the positive WTP may include the unaffordability of healthy diets, preference for better tastes, and time-saving of fast-food consumption. These findings can help policymakers evaluate the effectiveness of relevant policies and develop targeted strategies to improve the local food environment.