Measuring the Impact of Travel Costs on Grocery Shopping

We build an empirical framework for the analysis of grocery store choice. We find that higher travel costs lead people to shop at places where they pay higher prices and face less variety in economically significant magnitudes. Moreover, store convenience (or travel costs) – rather than prices or variety – is what drives store choice. These results suggest that policies increasing access to supermarkets in areas with a limited supermarket presence are a step in the right direction, in terms of getting people to shop at stores that are more affordable and more likely to offer healthy foods.