Association of neighborhood food availability with housing price in inner Changsha, China before and after the COVID-19 epidemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic notably affected the retail food industry, leading us to ask which types of neighborhoods experienced a rise/decline in “unhealthy/healthy” food outlets following the pandemic. We decomposed neighborhood housing price into 2019 price and the changes since 2019 and examined the repeated cross-sectional associations of neighborhood food availability with housing price measures. Using boundaries of 1640 residential developments in inner Changsha, China, we analyzed food outlet counts within a 0.5-km radius of each development's centroid alongside housing prices and built environment characteristics. We used mixed effects linear regression models to estimate changes in, and differences between, the availability of five types of outlets within established and new developments. Established developments that had higher housing prices in 2019 had more late-night snack shops in 2019 and 2021 and fewer sit-down restaurants in 2021. Increasing housing prices were associated with fewer sit-down restaurants between 2017 and 2019 and more sit-down restaurants between 2019 and 2021 around established developments. Low housing prices might promote availability of “healthy” foods at sit-down restaurants and thereby partly protect residents from high calorie-high fat diets. Community understanding of changes and differences in food availability can provide food resilience against future risks.