A field study related acceptability of fat tax in Turkey

Obesity is a global health problem that threatens public health and is widespread throughout the world. States use many financial and non-financial instruments to fight this health problem. Fat tax is one of the financial instruments that used in the fight against obesity. Obesity tax, which is taken as an additional financial obligation through unhealthy foods, is used by many states today. In this study, it has been aimed to measure the fat tax admissibility of the people that live in Turkey and to determine the factors affecting this acceptability. In this direction, 1683 individuals residing in NUTS Level 1 region were surveyed by stratified random sampling and the data were analyzed by using SPSS 22 and LISREL 8.51 program. As a result of the analysis, it was found that economic, political, sociopsychological and health factors were effective on the fat tax acceptability level. According to the results of the study, fat tax acceptability levels of peoples were low. While the highest level of admissibility is female and the marital status is single, the occupational group is public employees. There is a direct relationship between age, education, monthly average income, monthly food expenditure and the fat tax acceptability level. On the contrary, there has been an inverse relationship between body mass index and acceptability. According to the results of structural equation modeling, economic, socio-psychological, health and political factors affecting the level of acceptability has been found to be related with each other. The most effective factor on the fat tax acceptability level is health, second economy, third socio-psychological and last one is the political factor. While the economic factor and political factor negatively affect acceptability, health and socio-psychological factors positively affect.