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What is the relationship between food shopping and daily mobility? A relational approach to analysis of food access

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Abstract

Recent research on food access has increasingly focused on how individuals’ daily mobility, much of it based on activity spaces created from GPS data. In this paper, we expand this research through an analysis of a large transit survey (n = 21,298 households) from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. We do this using relational approach focused on the topological connections found in household travel patterns rather than measures of exposure based on geographic distance. Our exploratory data analysis analyzes both grocery shopping and eating out across the metropolitan area, focusing on the position of utilized food sources relative to home and work locations, utilized modes of transit, and other daily activities often combined with food shopping. Households often used food sources located outside their residential neighborhoods, usually moving toward the central city to do so. Eating out occurred farther from home than grocery shopping, though in many cases close to work. Automobile use was most common for grocery shopping trips, but less so in the lowest income households and in the central city. Our findings show that a relational approach can identify distinctive patterns in everyday food provisioning by emphasizing the connections between food shopping and other everyday household activities.

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Notes

  1. More information on this study and a downloadable dataset is available at http://www.metrocouncil.org/Transportation/Planning-2/Transit-Plans,-Studies-Reports/Other-Studies-Reports/Travel-Behavior-Inventory.aspx.

  2. http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/retailerlocator.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Debarchana Ghosh, Steven Holloway, and the journal editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback during the writing and revision of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Jerry Shannon

  2. University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    W. Jay Christian

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  1. Jerry Shannon
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Correspondence to Jerry Shannon.

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This research is based on a publically available secondary dataset we obtained from a government source, and thus our work involved no direct contact with human subjects or release of sensitive information.

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We have no conflicts of interest in publishing this research.

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Shannon, J., Christian, W.J. What is the relationship between food shopping and daily mobility? A relational approach to analysis of food access. GeoJournal 82, 769–785 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-016-9716-0

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