Traffic Delays Cause Significant Spike In Visits To Fast-Food Restaurants, Study Finds

If you find yourself hitting the drive-through after a long day at work, you’re not alone — a new study suggests traffic delays significantly increase visits to fast-food restaurants, especially during the evening rush hour.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looked at daily highway traffic patterns in Los Angeles County over more than two years, and compared it to data showing how many cell phone users entered fast-food restaurants over the same period.

“In our analysis focusing on Los Angeles County, unexpected traffic delays beyond the usual congestion led to a 1% increase in fast food visits. That might not sound like a lot, but its equivalent to 1.2 million more fast food visits per year in LA County alone,” said study author Becca Taylor, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois. “We describe our results as being modest but meaningful in terms of potential for changing unhealthy food choices.”

The research, published in the Journal of Urban Economics, showed a causal link between traffic delays and increased visits to fast-food restaurants, and the link held at different time scales, including 24-hour periods and hour-by-hour in a given day. When analyzed by the day, the data showed that traffic delays of just 30 seconds per mile increased fast-food visits by 1%.

“It might not be intuitive to imagine what a 30-second delay per mile feels like,” Taylor said. “I think of it as the difference between 10 a.m. traffic and 5 p.m. traffic.”

Looking at the data hour by hour, there were “significantly” more fast-food visits when the traffic delays hit during the evening rush-hour commute, while grocery visits dipped slightly during the same time.

“If there’s traffic between 5 and 7 p.m., which happens to be right around the evening meal time, we see an increase in fast food visits,” Taylor said. “Drivers have to make a decision about whether to go home and cook something, stop at the grocery store first, or just get fast food.”

Given that fast-food restaurants line highway feeder roads across the country, the results likely extend far beyond Los Angeles County.

“Our results contribute to the literature suggesting time constraints are really important to the food choices people make. Any policies aimed at loosening time constraints — and traffic is essentially lost time — could help battle unhealthy eating,” Taylor said. “That could mean improvements in infrastructure to mitigate traffic congestion, expanding public transport availability, and potentially increasing work from home opportunities.”