UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Ran Li, assistant professor of agricultural economics, will give the talk, “Market-Based Surplus Food Redistribution and Household Food Access: Evidence from Too Good To Go,” at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 25, in 157 Hosler Building on the Penn State University Park campus. The talk is free and open to the public.
The event is part of a spring seminar series hosted by the Initiative for Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy (EEEPI).
Li’s talk will discuss the effectiveness of the mobile app, Too Good To Go (TGTG), as a potential complement to public food assistance by reallocating surplus food into low-cost consumption opportunities.
TGTG is an app-based food marketplace founded in Denmark with the purpose of ending food waste by connecting customers to food suppliers like restaurants, bakeries and stores that have surplus food.
“Our research investigated whether Too Good To Go — a mobile platform that connects consumers with restaurants and grocery stores selling surplus food at discounted prices — improves household food access in the United States,” Li said. “We found that households using the app are more likely to report preference-aligned food sufficiency — having enough of the kinds of food they want — accompanied by declines in preference-unaligned food sufficiency and reductions in and severe food insufficiency.”
Li’s research examines how food policies and industry-led initiatives shape household and agribusiness behavior in real-world settings. She draws on primary data collected through surveys and experiments, as well as large-scale secondary data, to identify causal effects. Her recent work evaluates key policy and market-based interventions aimed at reducing food waste — such as organics recycling mandates and platforms like Too Good To Go — and provides evidence on how these initiatives influence firm practices and household food-related decisions.
About EEEPI
Established in 2011, EEEPI operates as a University-wide initiative at Penn State with support from the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and the Institute of Energy and the Environment. EEEPI seeks to catalyze research in energy and environmental systems economics across the University and to build a world-class group of economists with interests in interdisciplinary collaboration.