HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES AND ADOPTION OF COMMUNITY FOOD ASSISTANCE PROGRAM: CONSUMER’S PERSPECTIVE OF INDIRA CANTEEN
Food insecurity, often referred to as “hunger”, leads to health issues. Food insecurity challenge has witnessed global economies involve private firms and markets participations from public. Various states have explored mitigation of food insecurity through public-private partnership (PPP) model. The recent Covid-19 brought in numerous challenges not only to economies but globally many people faced problems of food availability, food expenses problems, and dietary issues due to food insecurity. Significant disruptions in availability, consumption had worsening effect on food insecurity specifically in urban cites and town where forced lockdown was food accessibility problems. The urban population faced with loss of income during Covid-19 lockdown, faced the risk of increased food expenses, food insecurity leading to issues of well-being and health. This study covers the fundamental issues of SDG2-accessibility, affordability and utilization of food- tactfully addressed through a public-private partnership (PPP) model in Bengaluru City of Karnataka State, India-called Indira Canteen from consumer’s perspective. Using quantitative survey data from 250 randomly selected households from three different municipal wards of a local urban metropolitan community in Bengaluru City of Karnataka State, India. The study investigates the consumer’s value perception on the PPP Government Initiative. The findings revealed customers have found the new PPP initiative model as an enabler of household food insecurity especially in terms of household expenses. Furthermore, it highlights amongst other pertinent findings, menu changes could lead to discomfort associated disturbances in the consumer’s household expenses.
Food Insecurity, Food Expenses, Household Expenses, Indira Canteen, Public Private Partnership, SDG2.