Frank Blank

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

---

Candidate: Jing Cai

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Economics

Title: The Allocation of Time and Goods: Three Essays on American Household Shopping Behavior

Committee:
Dr. Jean Kimmel, Chair
Dr. John Earle
Dr. Wei-Chiao Huang

Date: Friday, October 29, 2010 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
3025 Brown Hall

Abstract:
Consumers’ shopping behavior connects market goods expenditure with the out-of-market time allocation in their daily time use. This study is composed of three essays. In the first essay, data are collected from the American Time Use Survey and it is found that an individual’s time devoted to shopping is positively determined by opportunity cost of time. Grocery shopping and other shopping, as two distinct types of shopping, react differently to a series of individual and household characteristics as well as by seasons. The corresponding marginal effects also differentiate between shopping time, leisure time, and home production time. In regards to gender difference, females dominate in amount of shopping time, and males and females respond differently on change of time due to change in economic status.
The second essay examines the demand for market goods as an important factor in the process of household production. The researcher analyzes food and non-food expenditures of households in the United States using the 2002 and 2003 Current Population Survey Food Security Supplements. The results reveal the relationship between earned income and food purchased for home consumption, food purchased in restaurants, and non-food grocery goods purchases. It is found that expenditure for food to be consumed at home is related positively to income, while the share of total purchases devoted to home consumption is negatively related to income. Demographic variables and socioeconomic variables are found to play important roles in expenditure determination.
In the third essay, a joint examination of shopping time and shopping expenditures is performed by merging the data from the researcher’s time use study and expenditure study. The results of this paper show that shopping time and goods expenditure are related positively, so that the complementarities exist between grocery shopping time and grocery expenditure for American households.