Food preferences, religion and online food delivery behaviour in India

Online food delivery (OFD) platforms increasingly operate in culturally heterogeneous markets where patronage may be conditioned on social identities and functional considerations. This study examines whether dietary orientation is associated with three dimensions of OFD engagement – adoption, ordering frequency and multihoming – and whether these associations vary across religious contexts in India. Using survey data from 507 respondents, probit and negative binomial models with marginal effects are employed. The findings indicate that vegetarianism is associated with lower OFD engagement across all three dimensions. The association with adoption is statistically significant among Hindu/Jain respondents, but not among respondents from other religious groups. However, the formal interaction between dietary orientation and religion is not statistically significant, indicating that these sub-group patterns should be interpreted as conditional associations rather than definitive evidence of moderation. Nevertheless, the negative interaction coefficient provides a descriptive indication that the association between vegetarianism and OFD adoption may be attenuated across religious contexts, particularly in larger samples and especially among Hindus/Jains. Education is positively associated with OFD adoption and multihoming, while age and gender are associated with ordering frequency. The findings contribute to OFD research by highlighting dietary orientation as a potentially relevant basis for behavioural segmentation alongside conventional consumer characteristics. For OFD operators, the results suggest that dietary segmentation may inform market strategy, but specialised services or infrastructure should be guided by granular market research on segment size, demand intensity and platform behaviour.