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Economic Costs and Benefits of Promoting Healthy Takeaway Meals at Workplace Canteens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2015

Jørgen Dejgaard Jensen ,
Morten Raun Mørkbak  and
Jonas Nordström
Jørgen Dejgaard Jensen
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Morten Raun Mørkbak
Affiliation:
University of Southern Denmark, Department of Business and Economics
Jonas Nordström
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
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Abstract

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Canteen Takeaway is a novel concept, which entails workplace canteens to utilise existing production capacity to supply packaged meals for employees to bring home. The concept has a potential to raise the average nutritional quality of employees’ diets. The purpose of the study is to assess the economic net gains for users, and for society as a whole, of promoting healthy canteen takeaway meals, using Danish workplaces as an example. The analytical framework for the study combines direct cost analyses, users’ willingness to pay estimated through a choice experiment and cost-of-illness methods to assess the net society costs and benefits associated with an extended use of canteen takeaway meals as a health promotion strategy. The results show that employees have a positive willingness to pay for health attributes in canteen takeaway meals, but with a minority having a highly negative willingness to pay for the canteen takeaway concept. The potential health effects of a healthy canteen takeaway programme are estimated to be positive, but modest in magnitude. The estimated costs of providing healthy canteen takeaway meals exceed the sum of average direct and indirect benefits. In conclusion, healthy CTA programmes seems to be an economically sustainable intervention at some workplaces, though the analysis does not fully support a full-scale implementation of healthy CTA programmes at Danish workplaces from a welfare economic perspective.

Keywords

cost-benefit analysisdalychoice experimentcanteen take-away mealshealth
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , 17 December 2012 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis 2012

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