Diving into the consumer nutrition environment: A Bayesian spatial factor analysis of neighborhood restaurant environment
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Date
2018-02-01
Authors
Luan, Hui
Law, Jane
Lysy, Martin
Advisor
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
Neighborhood restaurant environment (NRE) plays a vital role in shaping residents' eating behaviors. While NRE 'healthfulness' is a multi-facet concept, most studies evaluate it based only on restaurant type, thus largely ignoring variations of in-restaurant features. In the few studies that do account for such features, healthfulness scores are simply averaged over accessible restaurants, thereby concealing any uncertainty that attributed to neighborhoods' size or spatial correlation. To address these limitations, this paper presents a Bayesian Spatial Factor Analysis for assessing NRE healthfulness in the city of Kitchener, Canada. Several in-restaurant characteristics are included. By treating NRE healthfulness as a spatially correlated latent variable, the adopted modeling approach can: (i) identify specific indicators most relevant to NRE healthfulness, (ii) provide healthfulness estimates for neighborhoods without accessible restaurants, and (iii) readily quantify uncertainties in the healthfulness index. Implications of the analysis for intervention program development and community food planning are discussed. (c) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Description
The final publication is available at Elsevier via https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sste.2017.12.001 © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Keywords
Neighborhood restaurant environment, Consumer nutrition environment, Bayesian inference, Spatial modeling, Factor analysis, Community food planning