Investigation into Behavioral Change Patterns of Dine-In at Restaurant, Food Delivery, and Food Take-Out Resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study in South Korea

This paper examines behavioral change patterns of food consumption through three channels—dine-in at restaurant, food delivery, and food take-out—during and after the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The unique feature of the behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic that set them apart from those during previous pandemics was the rise of online shopping. Thus, it is important to understand the new consumer behaviors for the three food consumption channels over time (before, during, and after the pandemic), for example, how they were affected by the pandemic, what dominant change patterns were, and how the intertwined relationship between the channels evolved. This study develops a latent class model using survey data collected by the Korea Rural Economic Institute in 2021 to jointly investigate the behavioral change patterns of dine-in at restaurant, food delivery, and food take-out. The results showed that there existed six latent groups, namely, 1) “status quo maintainers,” 2) “dine-in minimizers,” 3) “mild online adopters,” 4) “temporary shifters,” 5) “food expenditure cutters,” and 6) “strong online adopters.” The results highlighted that the behavioral change pattern varied by the persistence of the changes and the consumption channel choice. The socio-economic and demographic characteristics of each group were also discussed.