Online Grocery Delivery Services: an Opportunity to Address Food Disparities in Transportation-Scarce Areas
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Online Grocery Delivery Services: An Opportunity to Address Food Disparities in Transportation-scarce Areas Tawanna R. Dillahunt Sylvia Simioni Xuecong Xu School of Information School of Information Literature, Science, and the Arts University of Michigan University of Michigan University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, USA Ann Arbor, MI, USA Ann Arbor, MI, USA tdillahu@umich:edu ssimioni@umich:edu xuecong@umich:edu ABSTRACT ACM Reference Format: Online grocery delivery services present new opportuni- Tawanna R. Dillahunt, Sylvia Simioni, and Xuecong Xu. 2019. On- ties to address food disparities, especially in underserved line Grocery Delivery Services: An Opportunity to Address Food Disparities in Transportation-scarce Areas. In CHI Conference on areas. However, such services have not been systematically Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019), May 4– evaluated. This study evaluates such services’ potential to 9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK. ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 4, provide healthy-food access and infuence healthy-food pur- 15 pages. https://doi:org/10:1145/3290605:3300879 chases among individuals living in transportation-scarce and low-resource areas. We conducted a pilot experiment with 20 participants consisting of a randomly assigned group’s 1 INTRODUCTION 1-month use of an online grocery delivery service, and a con- Online shopping is pervasive and it is predicted that grocery trol group’s 1-month collection of grocery receipts, and a set markets will be the next major retail sector to be disrupted by of semi-structured interviews. We found that online grocery ecommerce [17]. Recent predictions suggest that consumers delivery services (a) serve as a feasible model to healthy-food could spend up to $100 billion annually by 2022 or 2024 on access if they are afordable and amenable to multiple pay- online grocery shopping alone [44]. More than half of Mil- ment forms and (b) could lead to healthier selections. We lennials and Generation X’ers and over approximately 40% of contribute policy recommendations to bolster afordability Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation have purchased of healthy-food access and design opportunities to promote consumer packaged goods online [44]. Nevertheless, users healthy foods to support the adoption and use of these ser- of online grocery shopping services are typically highly edu- vices among low-resource and transportation-scarce groups. cated [1, 3, 57], afuent [1, 3, 57, 59], and technically adept [60]. While online grocery shopping can create numerous CCS CONCEPTS societal opportunities such as improved equity [4], it is un- • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in known how benefcial these services are or could be among HCI; User studies; users who are traditionally underrepresented in such ser- vices. KEYWORDS Individuals who live in transportation-scarce and low- Food disparities, health, online grocery delivery income areas face difculties in maintaining a healthy diet given their lack of fnancial resources and the lack of super- markets in urban areas [9, 24]. These areas are often referred Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for to as “food deserts” because residents have limited access to personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies afordable and healthy food [15]. In the U.S., disparities in are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights access to supermarkets disproportionately afect low-income for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must and racial/ethnic minority communities [51]. be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or Although local government and supermarket partnerships republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specifc have collaborated to address this issue by bringing supermar- permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. kets into underserved areas, whether this leads to healthier CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK eating has been unclear. While some studies note modest © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. improvements in nutrition and diet [64, 65], others fnd that ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5970-2/19/05. $15.00 the addition of new supermarkets may not lead to changes https://doi:org/10:1145/3290605:3300879 in dietary habits but do note an increase in awareness of food access [14]. Because online grocery delivery services these partnerships to local markets, online grocery delivery provide access to a wider variety of food and do so digitally, services could mitigate issues of afordability and promote technical interventions may be necessary to bridge the gap community. Our results also suggest that participants from between perceptions of food access and healthy-food intake the online grocery shopping group made healthier selec- [14]. tions. We frst look at factors that enable low-income and First, these services provide consumers with access so that transportation-scare individuals to beneft from the online consumers can shop at grocery stores in the same city and re- grocery-delivery model. Then, building from past work, we ceive their orders on the same day. Second, these services pro- discuss factors that could further promote the selection of vide consumers with an interface that suggests items to pur- healthy foods. This study builds on a growing thread of re- chase, shows items on sale, and allows consumers to search search to understand opportunities for technology to address for food digitally. Websites could infuence decisions and the needs of underserved communities, particularly as it re- be tailored to increase positive behaviors [30, 31, 41, 42, 47] lates to transportation [19, 20, 29] and healthy-food access and human-computer interaction (HCI) is well-aligned to [48, 55]. respond to healthy-food practices in design [10]. Finally, past research notes that transportation models are not often 2 RELATED WORK geared towards social determinants of health such as em- A survey of the research in retail and distribution manage- ployment, healthy food, and healthcare access [20]. While ment, economics, and HCI suggest the need for more con- some specialized transportation models are available in spe- sumer insights in online-grocery delivery, particularly from cifc locations, they have not been systematically evaluated those who are not traditionally represented in such platforms. and require further investigation [20]. These investigations It is also unclear what efect, if any, such services have on could help to address issues related to food deserts and the healthy-food consumption. While existing HCI research and corresponding disparities that exist among marginalized pop- interventions explore how technology can encourage healthy ulations [20]. Given the opportunity for HCI to contribute eating, new and existing innovations in technology present to this space, we sought to answer the following research a key opportunity to address these issues. questions: • RQ1: Does the online grocery-delivery model serve as Underrepresented Use of Online Grocery Shopping a feasible model to provide healthy-food access to low- and the Sharing Economy income and transportation-scarce individuals? Why The majority of the research conducted around home de- or why not? livery services focuses on the perspective of the provider • RQ2: Does an online grocery-delivery service lead to (i.e.,the entity selling the good or service) [22]. Consumer re- healthier-food choices? Why or why not? search primarily focuses on who the consumers are and their • RQ3: What opportunities exist for online grocery deliv- behaviors, or the overall quality of the home delivery service ery service design to support healthy choices among [22]. This research rarely investigates how the availability of individuals living in low-income and transportation- online grocery delivery impacts consumer shopping habits scarce environments? or what people actually purchase. To answer the frst and third research questions, we con- Early consumer-related research explored who used these ducted a pilot study consisting of a controlled feld experi- services and found that age and education were signifcant ment followed by semi-structured interviews. We randomly determinants of interest in using grocery shopping services assigned 10 out of 20 individuals to use Shipt for 1 month [25]. For example, people older than 50 years (compared to and interviewed them about their experience. Shipt is an 18 to 29 year olds) and those with less education were less online grocery delivery service that provides a log, or digital likely to use such services [25]. Another study, a prelimi- receipt of food purchases. To answer the second research nary survey of consumer response to online food channels, question, we asked our control-group participants to provide found that those who were better educated and had some- us with their last month’s worth of grocery receipts and what higher incomes were more likely to shop online [40]. compared the healthiness of the two groups. All participants These consumers were more likely to do so primarily for were recruited from low-resource and transportation scarce convenience [40]. However, 61% of Millennials, 55% of Gen- areas because many of them lack access to grocery stores eration Xers, 41% of Baby Boomers and 39% of the Greatest [61] and fresh fruits and vegetables [27, 37, 52, 53]. Generation have recently made consumer packaged good We found that the online grocery delivery service supports purchases online. Therefore, age might no longer be an in- access to healthier food choices because of its partnership hibitor to online shopping [44]. Yet those who typically used with supermarkets that ofer such items. We also found that applications of the sharing economy have been found to by allowing for fexible payment methods and extending have higher education [1, 3, 57], higher incomes [1, 3, 57, 59], and had higher levels of profciency with technology [60].