Street food eating habits in Bangladesh: A study on Dhaka city

Abstract

There is a very high demand of the street foods in Dhaka city of Bangladesh. The reasons can be attributed by the tastes and varieties of foods, easily accessibility, low price, readily made, attraction to the foods, and above all, needs of the street people. Dhaka is the most populous city of Bangladesh. It is also the capital of the country. There are more than 18 million people, as of 2016 in Greater Dhaka city, living here in this city. It is also one of the most populated cities in the world with a density of 23,234 people per square kilometer within a total area of 300 square kilometers. Street food entrepreneurs are still unable to fulfill the demands of this huge population of this city. Due to the rise in income of the city dwellers, they are coming out from their congested houses to the parks and streets on the vacations and holidays and eating street foods. Sometimes, this is a fashion of the young people eating foods standing at the street. Although, a significant portion of these people think that the street foods are unhygienic and unhealthy even then they eat those foods when they are outside their houses. Therefore, this paper seeks to identify the reasons for which the street foods are eaten by the people living in Dhaka city. This study has been conducted among the people who eat street foods at their leisure time or vacations. To conduct this study, a total of 340 street food lovers were interviewed with the help of a structured questionnaire. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Multivariate analysis techniques were used to identify the factors having influence on the habits of street food eaters in Dhaka city. The confirmatory factor analysis identified six factors such as, pleasure and soundness, convenience and variety, cost, attractiveness, food value, & taste and image. Results also show that the street food eating habit of the people of Dhaka City is significantly influenced by the pleasure and soundness, convenience and variety, cost, and attractiveness to the foods. This study suggests that the tastes and variety of street foods, accessibility, price and attractiveness should be emphasized to increase the attraction of the street food eaters towards the street foods in Dhaka City of Bangladesh.