The Impact of Medicaid and SNAP Program Participation on WIC Participants’ Redemption Behavior Pattern: An Abstract

The federal government spends a large amount of money on assistance programs such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Medicaid to address the food insecurity issue of low-income consumers (Au et al. 2016; Greenblatt et al. 2015; Zhang et al. 2020). However, there is a lacking of understanding regarding how these assistance programs interplay with each other, and little research has been conducted from the marketing and consumer behavior perspective. Aiming to better understand the WIC participants’ behavioral pattern and provide actionable implications to the WIC program, this study analyzed the profiles and shopping transaction records of over 59,000 WIC participants in Virginia and empirically examined how WIC participants’ Medicaid and SNAP program participation influences their redemption behavior in terms of WIC food benefits. Specifically, we first identified a curvilinear redemption pattern during the participants’ benefit cycle. This pattern suggests that the WIC participants in general redeemed more about their benefits in the beginning and the end of each benefit cycle. Further, such a curvilinear relationship was significantly moderated by Medicaid participation but not by SNAP participation. Family structure change such as adding a new baby was found to significantly influence this relationship. This study contributes to the literature on the WIC program and the research on food insecurity of low-income consumers. The insights provided in this study help consumer researchers and public policymakers better understand the behaviors of low-income consumers and provide implications for WIC program managers to improve the WIC or other food assistance programs.