WIC Participants' Perspectives of Facilitators and Barriers to Shopping With eWIC Compared With Paper Vouchers.

OBJECTIVES

(1) To describe facilitators and barriers to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food shopping via electronic benefits transfer (eWIC) compared with paper vouchers. (2) To explore suggestions that WIC participants had for modifying the program to enhance their overall WIC experience.

DESIGN

Qualitative, semistructured, in-depth interviews.

SETTING

WIC participants in East Tennessee.

PARTICIPANTS

Twenty-four primary food shoppers of WIC-participating households aged at least 18 years were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy.

PHENOMENON OF INTEREST

Perceived facilitators and barriers to use of eWIC as compared with paper vouchers.

ANALYSIS

Interview transcripts were analyzed using a grounded theory approach to identify emergent themes.

RESULTS

Participants identified several ways eWIC has improved their food shopping experience, including ad hoc redemption of WIC benefits and a quicker, more discrete checkout. Participants' chief complaint about eWIC was transaction errors at checkout. Participants identified other barriers to shopping for WIC foods that cannot be addressed by the card alone, such as difficulty identifying WIC items in-store. Participants reported changes to their benefit tracking behaviors and provided suggestions to improve WIC further.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The transition to eWIC was viewed favorably among WIC participants, although participants identified a need for additional support in addressing transaction errors. This finding presents an opportunity to modify messages delivered to WIC participants by WIC nutrition educators and enhance collaboration between WIC agencies, retailers, and e-commerce technology providers.