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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1530812
This article is part of the Research Topic Environmental Resilience and Sustainable Agri-food System Management View all 8 articles

Impacts of Neighborhood Restaurant Density on Adults' Dietary Quality: Evidence from an IV-LASSO Approach in China

Provisionally accepted
Yalin Tang Yalin Tang 1Jian Zong Jian Zong 2*Maoran Zhu Maoran Zhu 3*Xuyuan Zheng Xuyuan Zheng 1*Chengfang Liu Chengfang Liu 2*
  • 1 Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China
  • 2 Peking University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
  • 3 China Minmetals (China), Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The development of the restaurant industry has disrupted food consumption patterns, while evidence on how restaurants impact dietary quality remains limited and inconsistent. This study is one of the first to demonstrate a non-linear, inverted Ushaped relationship between local restaurant density and dietary quality, leveraging data from four rounds of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). To mitigate endogeneity issues, our analyses employ a LASSO-selected Instrumental Variable (IV) approach. Our results show that before reaching the threshold, the increase in neighborhood restaurant density, primarily driven by indoor restaurants, leads to improvements in residents' dietary quality. However, once past the threshold, higher restaurant density reduces dietary quality, mainly driven by fast food restaurants. These effects are more pronounced among males with higher-income, and those living in urban and eastern China. The mechanisms underlying these relationships include the increased frequency of eating outside home (OH), with the similar inverted U-shaped relationship observed for dietary diversity further explaining our findings. We recommend supplementing neighborhoods with limited access to dining options through indoor restaurants, and mitigating the negative effects of excessive restaurants density, especially that of fast-food restaurants.

    Keywords: Neighborhood restaurant environment, food desert, dietary diversity, Dietary quality, Diet balance index

    Received: 19 Nov 2024; Accepted: 03 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Tang, Zong, Zhu, Zheng and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Jian Zong, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, Beijing Municipality, China
    Maoran Zhu, China Minmetals (China), Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
    Xuyuan Zheng, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China
    Chengfang Liu, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, Beijing Municipality, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.