No abstract

Under the sustainability domain, food waste is a significant global challenge receiving growing attention. The management of household food waste which relies heavily on landfilling, is predominantly ineffective and unsustainable. To implement sustainable food waste management, an understanding of the individual behaviour is needed since psychological effects often undermine technological solutions. This study direct its investigation on urban households’ sustainable food waste management behaviour by extending the Theory of Planned Behaviour. An online survey was utilized for data collection. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling, assessments were made on the determinants of intention and behaviour of 520 households in the Klang Valley. The analysis support two factors that influence attitude positively, while five factors positively influence intention to implement best practices of reusing leftovers, separating household waste, and doing home composting. However, although the households have positive intentions, yet their composting practices seem to be the least adopted compared to the other sustainable elements. Addressing the lack of participation requires a holistic approach via dissemination of educational materials, social media coverage, and awareness campaigns. It is also suggested that composting be incentivized and be included in reward schemes similar to recycling. This study paves the way to enhance understanding of the factors to adopt sustainable food waste management among households in the urban areas. The findings provide insights for policy makers and other stakeholders on what type of information to consider when designing effective food waste management campaigns and urban development strategies, supporting the opportunity for consumer behavioural change.

Sustainable food waste management practices at the source are directly dependent on household behavior. A valid and reliable instrument is needed to evaluate the sustainable food waste management (SFWM) research framework. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new SFWM framework on a pilot scale before starting the main research. A pilot study was conducted to evaluate the survey questionnaire’s usability and reliability. Respondents from 150 urban households in Klang Valley was surveyed using an online survey method. A detailed validation of the study constructs was done through the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), producing a usable final factor structure. The results confirmed the constructs have good reliability based on the Cronbach’s alpha values that ranges from 0.860 to 0.979. The results provide useful information on factors that could affect the behavioral intention of practicing SFWM in people’s daily life and may be adopted by future research on a larger scale. The article contributes to the body of research in this research context by describing the pilot test method and process. A proposed framework that integrates additional variables into a TPB-based theory was used for examining SFWM behavior outcome in a more comprehensive model. Other studies in the field were mostly conducted on food waste reduction behavior, but this study intends to close the gap of households’ intention to manage them sustainably. Besides providing a new framework for SFWM, the need for a pilot study is highlighted to achieve an improved research design, adding to the lack of literature on pilot studies in the sustainable food waste management context.