EXPLORING THE INTERPLAY OF FOOD INSECURITY AND CORRESPONDING COPING BEHAVIORS AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERVENTION THROUGH RESOURCE MANAGEMENT BEHAVIORS

Abstract

Food insecurity affects 20 to 50% of US college students, which is significantly higher than the national average of 12.8%, with significant impacts on students' physical health, mental wellbeing, and academic performance. Despite its prevalence, key research gaps persist. Current USDA food security survey modules may inadequately capture college students’ unique experiences, despite their widespread use in this population. Additionally, there is limited understanding of long-term effects among students, and a scarcity of evidence-based solutions and targeted policies to address campus food insecurity. This study aims to address key gaps in literature by examining the coping strategies adopted by food-insecure college students, particularly how these strategies vary by food insecurity severity, and by exploring how resource management behaviors including food planning and shopping routines, food literacy and financial behavior, are associated with food security levels. Using a cross-sectional design, data were collected from 373 college students through an online self-administered questionnaire hosted on the Qualtrics platform. Participants were eligible if they were undergraduate students enrolled in a four-year college in Maryland. Descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis and ANOVA tests, and ordinal logistic regression were used to analyze the data. Results indicated that as food insecurity worsened, students not only increased the frequency of their coping strategies but also progressed to more extreme measures. Initially, food insecure groups relied on strategies such as asking friends and family for food or money to buy food, buying the cheapest food available, avoiding expensive foods such as fruit and vegetables, eating at places in which you pay what you can and eating as much as possible when food is available. However, as food insecurity worsens, students reported reliance on extreme coping strategies such as choosing between food and essential expenses (rent, utilities, medicine), implementing stricter food shopping budgets resulting in limited diet variety, selling personal possessions to buy food, and stretching food to last longer. Additionally, frequent use of these coping strategies significantly predicted very low food security. The present finding suggests that certain coping strategies employed specifically by very low food secure students could serve as more sensitive indicators for identifying students in urgent need, potentially offering greater precision than current USDA food insecurity assessment modules. Also, financial behavior encompassing day-to-day money management and financial planning emerged as a significant predictor of food insecurity. Paradoxically, students who demonstrated stronger financial behaviors were more likely to experience higher levels of food insecurity. Our analysis also revealed that although not significant predictors in the ordinal logistic model, food insecure students were more likely to discard food based on date label expiration and demonstrated lower food literacy compared to their food secure counterparts. Overall, this study fills an important research gap by mapping how coping strategies evolve across varying levels of food insecurity, offering insights for developing context-specific tools andtargeted interventions for college students. To our knowledge, this is also the first study to examine key aspects of the utilization dimension of food insecurity among college students concerning resource management—specifically food literacy, planning, shopping routines, and financial behaviors—to identify potential areas for intervention. Findings highlight the urgent need to address food insecurity in this population, with resource management emerging as a promising intervention point.