Scholarlink

<p>Food delivery platforms have reshaped meal consumption by making prepared food easier to access, yet their implications for body-weight outcomes remain underexplored. Using China Family Panel Studies data from 2010 to 2020, merged with the staggered city-level entry of food delivery platforms, this paper examines whether platform expansion affected residents’ BMI and obesity risk. We estimate a baseline difference-in-differences specification with city and year fixed effects and further assess robustness using estimators designed for staggered treatment timing and treatment-effect heterogeneity. The results show that platform entry is associated with increases in both BMI and the probability of obesity. The estimated effects are more pronounced among younger adults, highly educated individuals, and workers outside the public sector. Mechanism analyses provide suggestive evidence that these effects are linked to both supply-side expansion of delivery-oriented food services and demand-side changes in dietary patterns and activity-related behaviors. Because the available data do not directly observe individual platform use or the nutritional composition of ordered meals, these mechanism results should be interpreted with caution. Taken together, the findings indicate that the convenience benefits of food delivery platforms may entail unintended health costs.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

The health cost of convenience: food delivery platform expansion and obesity

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月21日

查看全文
  • Yiwei Liu,
  • Huawei He,
  • Xi Wang,
  • Qiuyue Guo

摘要

Food delivery platforms have reshaped meal consumption by making prepared food easier to access, yet their implications for body-weight outcomes remain underexplored. Using China Family Panel Studies data from 2010 to 2020, merged with the staggered city-level entry of food delivery platforms, this paper examines whether platform expansion affected residents’ BMI and obesity risk. We estimate a baseline difference-in-differences specification with city and year fixed effects and further assess robustness using estimators designed for staggered treatment timing and treatment-effect heterogeneity. The results show that platform entry is associated with increases in both BMI and the probability of obesity. The estimated effects are more pronounced among younger adults, highly educated individuals, and workers outside the public sector. Mechanism analyses provide suggestive evidence that these effects are linked to both supply-side expansion of delivery-oriented food services and demand-side changes in dietary patterns and activity-related behaviors. Because the available data do not directly observe individual platform use or the nutritional composition of ordered meals, these mechanism results should be interpreted with caution. Taken together, the findings indicate that the convenience benefits of food delivery platforms may entail unintended health costs.