Food Accessibility From an Individual, Travel Behavior Perspective: Studies from Seattle, Washington and Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract

Food accessibility plays a key role in maintaining the diet-related health of a community. Traditionally, food accessibility is typically measured at static, aggregated levels centered around people's homes. This fails to consider the diverse preferences and travel behaviors among the population. This thesis explores an individual-level, travel-behavior informed perspective to understand how people travel to food through two studies. The first study examines how restaurant preferences are shaped by people's built environment, sociodemographics, and travel behavior in Seattle, Washington. Unique personas distinguished by characteristics such as number of children in a household, vehicle access, and age are formed. The second study develops a trajectory-based accessibility measure which considers connectivity, affordability and temporal alignment. A case study is performed in Stockholm, Sweden using transit smartcard data. Grocery store accessibility is measured at localized, 15-minute hubs along individual trajectories. Zones with few grocery stores but high transit connectivity to dense, opportunity-rich areas observe positive increases to accessibility when considering mobility. The methods developed in the second study can be used to test effects of policy on food access. Overall, this thesis provides two different perspectives to understand the intersection of transportation and food accessibility.