The Demand for Away from Home Food in Iranian Households: An Application of Box-Cox Double Hurdle Model

Inspired by Becker’s model (1965) and Double-Hurdle pattern by the transformation of Box-Cox and also using the statistical data related to the income and expenses of the urban and rural households in Iran during the year 2012, the most important economic and demographic reasons affecting the probable participation and amount of consumption of food away from home has been identified and then the elasticities related to the probable participation and conditional and unconditional consumptions been calculated. The elasticities resulting from estimating the maximum likelihood function of the research under the study indicates that the results of the explanatory factors on the probable participation and the expenses pertaining to the food away from home are sometimes favorable and sometimes contradictory and contrastive. The families themselves and their educational level respectively have a negative and positive favorable effect on the consumption of food away from home. The average age factor of the household has negative elasticity on the probable participation and positive elasticity on costs. So, it has a contrasting effect on the consumption of food away from home.