Journal of Applied Psychology 2026
The effects of food insecurity on work outcomes.
Abstract
Food insecurity-insufficient access to safe and nutritious foods-is one of the most crucial societal grand challenges the world faces today. It affects 2.3 billion people globally, and addressing it is one of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals of 2030 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations et al., 2025). Despite its prevalence and importance, the field of applied psychology has ignored this problem with the implicit assumption that food insecurity is not an issue relevant to the workplace. Contrary to this view, we hypothesize and demonstrate that food insecurity is detrimental to the three core work outcomes: task performance, work engagement, and organizational citizenship behaviors. To test our hypotheses, we employed a multimethod design across three empirical studies: (a) an experimental recall study, (b) a within-person diary study, and (c) a field experiment. Our findings consistently demonstrate that food insecurity leads to higher anxiety, which subsequently has a negative effect on task performance, work engagement, and organizational citizenship behavior. In our field experiment, we further demonstrated that providing food to those experiencing food insecurity can improve work outcomes. This research highlights that food insecurity is a significant issue with important implications for the workplace that requires greater attention from both researchers and business leaders. (PsycInfo Database Record
- DOI
- 10.1037/apl0001361
- Sources
- openalex