No abstract

This study identifies barriers and benefits of consumers' current doggy bag behaviors and provides the information required to run an effective community-based social marketing campaign encouraging consumers to take their uneaten restaurant and café food home. This is done by applying a twostage methodology, including quantitatively analyzing existing survey data and qualitatively investigating focus group discussion. Multiple barriers to widespread doggy bag participation were common and varied for different individuals and included both convenience and social stigma-related factors. The rational appeal of "saving money" was found to be the most effective motivator for encouraging doggy bag usage, especially for women, young people, students/unemployed, and low-income earners. Social marketing strategies and behavior change tools can be developed to remove the barriers and enhance the benefits of using doggy bags, such as developing positive social norms around using doggy bags and highlighting the financial incentive of using them. This research contributes to a limited but growing literature on out-of-home food waste and provides practicable insights for both public policy and for the food service sector for future initiatives aiming to reduce food waste.

Approximately 12% of total food waste is generated at the hospitality and food service level. Previous research has focused on kitchen and storeroom operations; however, 34% of food waste in the sector is uneaten food on consumers’ plates, known as “plate waste”. The effect of situational dining factors and motivational factors on plate waste was analysed in a survey of 1001 New Zealand consumers. A statistically significantly greater proportion (p < 0.05) of participants reported plate waste if the meal was more expensive, longer in duration or at dinnertime. Irrespective of age or gender, saving money was the most important motivating factor, followed by saving hungry people, saving the planet and, lastly, preventing guilt. Successful food waste reduction campaigns will frame reduction as a cost-saving measure. As awareness of the environmental and social costs of food waste builds, multifactorial campaigns appealing to economic, environmental and social motivators will be most effective.