Bus Stops Near Schools Advertising Junk Food and Sugary Drinks

Abstract

Children rarely understand the full extent of the persuasive purpose of advertising on their eating behaviours. Addressing the obesogenic environments in which children live, through a quantification of outdoor advertising, is essential in informing policy changes and enforcing stricter regulations. This research explores the proportion of bus stop advertisements promoting non-core food and beverages within walking distance (500 m) from schools in Auckland, New Zealand while using Google Street View. Information was collected on: school type, decile, address, Walk Score®, and Transit Score for all 573 schools in the Auckland region. Ground-truthing was conducted on 10% of schools and showed an alignment of 87.8%. The majority of advertisements on bus shelters were for non-food items or services (n = 541, 64.3%). Of the advertisements that were for food and/or beverages, the majority were for non-core foods (n = 108, 50.2%). There was no statistically significant difference between the variables core and non-core food and beverages and School decile (tertiles), Walk Score (quintiles), and Transit Score (quintiles). 12.8% of all bus stop advertisements in this study promoted non-core dietary options; highlighting an opportunity for implementing stricter regulations and policies preventing advertising unhealthy food and drink to children in New Zealand.

Policies to restrict unhealthy food and beverage advertising in outdoor spaces and on publicly owned assets: A scoping review of the literature

“…Of the 36 included studies, 28 reported on the prevalence of unhealthy advertising in outdoor spaces or on publicly owned assets 33–60 ; two reported associations between outdoor marketing and consumption of unhealthy food 6,61 ; one reported associations between outdoor advertising and the school food environment 58 ; one reported outdoor advertising and neighborhood level obesity rates 62 ; two reported on policy options for regulating unhealthy food marketing in outdoor environments 63,64 ; two reported on public opinions towards marketing regulation 65,66 ; and one study reported an evaluation of Chile’s Law of Food Labeling and Advertising 67 . A detailed description of all included studies from the academic literature is reported in Table S1.…”

“…Twelve studies reported on outdoor advertising specifically in areas surrounding schools. These studies, undertaken in various countries (Australia, 44,52,53 New Zealand, 39,42,46,49,58 Canada, 57 the USA, 41,43 and Manila, The Philippines, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 45 ), consistently showed that unhealthy food and beverage advertising is prevalent in areas around schools. For example, one Australian study of advertisements within a 500-m radius of primary schools in Sydney and Wollongong found that 80% of food and beverage advertisements were promoting unhealthy food, beverages and alcohol.…”

“…44 Seven studies specifically examined food and beverage advertising on public transport. 40,42,48,[52][53][54][55] For example, a 2019 study of advertisements in and immediately surrounding subway stations in Stockholm, Sweden, found 32.8% of advertisements promoted food products and of those, 65.4% promoted ultra-processed products (defined as processed food and beverages typically high in fat, salt and/or sugar, that are convenient, highly palatable, and heavily marketed 80 ). 40 A study in Perth, Australia, analyzed advertisements on every bus shelter within 500 m of schools within five local government areas and found 31.4% were promoting unhealthy products.…”

Associations between Children’s Physical Activity and Neighborhood Environments Using GIS: A Secondary Analysis from a Systematic Scoping Review

“…However, no recommendations for an optimal proportion for resampling exist. Precedents in child health and environment literature include Huang, Brien [83] physically confirming a random 10% selection of bus stops in a study using Google Street View to measure outdoor advertising around schools, and Vandevijvere, Sushil [84] randomly selecting 1% of 8403 geocoded food outlets and confirming details via telephone; however, the authors are unaware of this occurring with specific regard to physical activity destinations.…”

Improving spatial data in health geographics: a practical approach for testing data to measure children’s physical activity and food environments using Google Street View

“…In children’s health geographies research, GSV has been used to measure obesogenic advertising in children’s neighbourhoods [ 53 ] and on bus stops around schools [ 54 ]. This growing area of research has demonstrated the utility of GSV to measure environmental features in relation to health outcomes.…”