Does how you pay influence the share of healthy items that you Buy? Assessing differences in nutritional quality of food purchases by payment type

Shoppers that use cash as a form of payment are more likely to evaluate the necessity of an item they purchase than shoppers that pay with other forms of payment, such as credit cards. In this paper, we hypothesize that the use of cash may nudge shoppers to buy more healthful food items. We empirically evaluate whether the payment method affects the nutritional quality of food purchases. We also test whether the effect of payment type differs between food-at-home and food-away-from-home events. Specifically, we test whether shoppers purchase a higher share of nutritious food items when they pay with cash compared to when they use credit and debit cards. We use the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) data that tracks individual’s food purchases over one week. Using the Guiding Stars Program (GSP) algorithm to measure the nutritional quality of food items, we calculate the share of healthy items purchased at each event. We find that shoppers using cash purchase a higher share of healthy items than when they use credit or debit cards, and this nudging effect is primarily driven by food-away-from-home purchases.