Online Grocery Shopping Incentives Show Promise in Increasing Healthy Purchases, Reducing Food Insecurity

Low-income caregivers of children in the Bronx were encouraged to shop through delivery food waivers, text messages, grocery lists, and financial incentives.

Online grocery shopping has the potential to increase food access for households in areas where supermarkets selling affordable, healthy foods are scarce. When Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were expanded to include online food purchases, it increased access to markets, but research showed that SNAP families who shopped online made fewer purchases of fruits, vegetables, and legumes.

In a new study, nutrition researchers provided incentives for caregivers of young children to address barriers to purchasing healthy foods online, including lack of awareness of the program’s benefits, expensive online delivery fees, and lack of trust in shoppers to select high-quality products. They found that the incentives led to an increase in household purchases of healthy foods, and a decrease in household food insecurity, among other positive outcomes.

“We wanted to launch a pilot program to test whether different incentives would encourage families living in urban, low-income communities to make healthier purchases with their SNAP dollars,” says Angela Trude, an assistant professor of nutrition at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. “Our goal was to address structural barriers, digital literacy, and comfort with online grocery services to level the playing field for families with children to access healthy foods more equitably.”

The researchers examined data from 59 participants in the Bronx who were randomly sorted into groups testing four interventions: 1) free delivery only; 2) dollar matching for fruits, vegetables, and legumes purchased + free delivery; 3) weekly text messages with tips for online shopping + free delivery; and 4) meal plans with grocery list recommendations + free delivery. They assessed the feasibility of the program through the number of people who created Instacart accounts and gauged how participants felt about the program via surveys.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, showed that 47 percent of caregivers created an online grocery account after participating in the program. Prior to the interventions, participating households spent 20 percent of their grocery money on fruits, vegetables, and legumes. After the program, the average ticked upward to 21.6 percent. Regarding household food insecurity, participants reported a decrease in 0.6 points on a USDA assessment tool.

“Even in this small pilot, seeing families gain more reliable access to healthy foods is deeply encouraging, and drives us to expand this work," says Trude.

Most of the participants reported favorable attitudes toward the program with nearly 90 percent reporting the program’s video tutorial for creating an online account useful, and 82 percent finding the text messages useful. Many participants also shared that the grocery lists and delivery fee waivers were helpful.

“We’re excited to build on this work with new funding from the National Institutes of Health and to continue partnering with families, community organizations, retailers, and policymakers to test a fully powered intervention,” Trude says. “We want to identify the most effective combination of strategies to improve food and nutrition security, as well as approaches that are affordable and scalable through policy and programs.”

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