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Abstract
Many underserved communities continue to disproportionately suffer from food insecurity and low food accessibility despite policies geared towards alleviating these issues such as food assistance programs, government subsidies to lower the prices for healthy foods, and initiatives to open grocery stores in low food access areas. We offer an explanation, particularly for the failure of the more local initiatives aimed to successfully open grocery stores in low food access neighborhoods, through a game theoretical model that addresses these problems by incorporating the role of trust within a community. Residents with high trust are more likely to adopt a new grocery store as their primary location for purchasing fruits and vegetables, while residents with low or no trust are less likely to frequent the store even with discounted prices or lower travel costs. The varying factors that can affect residents’ trust, include poor maintenance and upkeep of the store, betrayal aversion from previous store closures at that location, the cost of adjusting to the store, and the inclusion of influencers. We create Bayesian variations of the Trust Game that imbed residents’ trust in government and store operators’ decisions to maintain or close a grocery store in a low income and low food access area. Using survey responses and secondary data, the theoretical trust model can showcase the likelihood of successfully opening a grocery store can vary by information including food insecurity rates, food accessibility rates, and racial/ethnic population shares. These games provide potential avenues for policymakers to better design place-specific food initiatives in ways that increase the odds of opening an incentivized store actually leading to improved food access and increased healthy food purchases. We conclude that these avenues can only occur if trust already exists within the underserved community or trust is gained through either partnerships with impactful influencers or price discounts on healthy food.