Amplification or Mitigation? The Role of Online Grocery Shopping in the Relationship Between Food Environment and the Healthfulness of Food Purchases

This paper investigates the role of online grocery shopping in shaping the relationship between the food environment and household food choices, with a focus on disadvantaged groups. We employ fixed-effect models with instrumental variables using consumer data from 2015 to 2019. We find that online grocery services may exacerbate nutrition inequality associated with food environment disparities. While a higher density of food stores enhances the healthfulness of food purchases among online grocery shoppers, it has no impact on those who do not use online grocery shopping. However, a higher density of convenience stores negatively impacts food healthfulness for nononline grocery shoppers, while having no significant effect on adopters. Moreover, the adoption of online grocery shopping affects food purchases differently depending on the local food environment: it tends to reduce the healthfulness of food purchase in less favorable food environments but improves it in more favorable ones.