Many commentators argue that domestic food waste is strongly influenced by consumer behaviours. This article reports on a study using mixed‐methods to identify key factors responsible for promoting consumer behaviours that lead to domestic food waste through the lens of the value–belief–norm theory. On the basis of the study's findings, three factors are proposed that cause behaviours that lead to food waste: supply knowledge – does a consumer know what food they have available; location knowledge – does a consumer know where to locate food items; and food literacy – to what degree do past experience and acquired knowledge impact on a consumer's food consumption and wastage practices. We analyse the study's findings in light of a review of literature about consumer food wastage behaviours and in turn, present new insights into consumer behaviour, food waste and the use of technology to reduce food waste. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The emergence of the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus has resulted in changes to the way we perceive our natural resources. Stressors such as climate change and population growth have highlighted the fragility of our WEF systems, necessitating integrated solutions across multiple scales. While a number of frameworks and analytical tools have been developed since 2011, a comprehensive WEF nexus tool remains elusive, hindered in part by our limited data and understanding of the interdependencies and connections across the WEF systems. To achieve this, the community of academics, practitioners and policy‐makers invested in WEF nexus research are addressing several critical areas that currently remain as barriers. First, the plurality of scales (e.g., spatial, temporal, institutional, jurisdictional) necessitates a more comprehensive effort to assess interdependencies between water, energy and food, from household to institutional and national levels. Second, and closely related to scale, a lack of available data often hinders our ability to quantify physical stocks and flows of resources. Overcoming these barriers necessitates engaging multiple stakeholders, and using experiences and local insights to better understand nexus dynamics in particular locations or scenarios, and we exemplify this with the inclusion of a UK‐based case study on exploring the nexus in a particular geographical area. We elucidate many challenges that have arisen across nexus research, including the impact of multiple scales in operation, and concomitantly, what impact these scales have on data accessibility. We assess some of the critical frameworks and tools that are applied by nexus researchers and articulate some of the steps required to develop from nexus thinking to an operationalisable concept, with a consistent focus on scale and data availability.
This paper introduces the first iteration of a study aimed at grouping similar food types together in a refrigerator to increase the awareness of available foods for consumers in a domestic environment. The goals of the project are twofold: i) Raise the awareness of available foods for all members of a household; ii) Reduce the amount of expired food waste in the household. The project implemented a paper-based colour scheme in refrigerators in households, assigning colours to particular food types (e.g. green to fruit and vegetables, red to meat, etc.). The findings show that the colour coding raised participants' awareness of available food items in the fridge, particularly for those participants who were not directly involved in the shopping and initial storage of each food item. The findings also indicate that such awareness led to a reduction in expiration of food and thus general food waste in the household. These preliminary findings suggest that raising awareness of food availability through categorisation and efficient communication of this information may lead to a reduction in food waste in domestic environments.
Mitigating domestic food waste reduces its environmental and economic impacts. In our study, we have identified the use of mobile technology to support behaviour change as a key tool to assist the process of reducing food waste. This paper reports on three mobile applications designed to reduce domestic food waste: Fridge Pal, LeftoverSwap and EatChaFood. The paper examines how each app can influence consumer knowledge of domestic food supply, location, and literacy. We discuss our findings with respect to three considerations: (i) assisting with the user's food supply and location knowledge; (ii) improving the user's food literacy; (iii) facilitating social food sharing of excess food. We present new insights for mobile interventions that encourage changes towards more sustainable behaviours to reduce food waste.
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