Analysis of Circular Thinking in Consumer Purchase Intention to Buy Sustainable Waste-To-Value (WTV) Foods

Abstract

One of the new fronts in food research is related to waste reuse and the impact of by-products on food nutrition intensity. These foods are Waste-to-Value (WTV) products that are suitable for demonstrating the processes of the circular economy (CE), in which another excess material is converted into a new food, generating higher nutritional properties. The manifestation of customer reaction is very strong when buying these products. Consumer findings can strongly support or hinder the development of circular systems through our purchasing decisions. In this way, it is essential to evaluate consumer WTV foods to learn about related consumer habits. Consumers can support or hinder the circular economy with their purchasing intentions. This analysis’s primary objective is to evaluate what different factors can be applied to consumers’ perception in purchasing sustainable WTV foods towards CE. In this study, a well-constructed questionnaire was prepared. Five hundred and forty-four (544) people participated in the survey, of which, 499 samples were analyzed. The primary research question was, “Would the consumer buy a sustainable Waste-to-Value (WTV) food product that affects the environment when it is produced? That is, it does not come from a circular system?” The other question is, how do the origin of products, information on production/nutritional value, consumer education, and certain socio-demographic characteristics affect the value of waste value for sustainable food consumption? According to the research results, in the case of the surveyed consumers, the younger age group (18–35 years old) shows a greater preference for buying sustainable products. It is also a surprising and new result that gender characteristics in this age group do not influence consumption patterns. Women and men showed the same preferences. Our second hypothesis is that education positively affects consumer intentions for sustainable WTV foods and especially organic products. The questionnaire did not confirm this.

Valorisation of chicken eggshell as a novel food ingredient in madeleine cake: an exploratory study amongst young adults

“…When asked about their feeling and attitude upon hearing about valorising food waste as a novel food ingredient, more than half of the young adults answered, "strongly positive and positive (57%)" and "strongly acceptable and acceptable (62%)", respectively. The positive attitude of young adults towards sustainable food products in the present study was found to be in line with other studies, which reported younger consumers as the group who are actively looking for new sources of food and are concerned about sustainable food development (Vermeir and Verbeke, 2008;Pelletier et al, 2013;Kanchanapibul et al, 2014;Ali et al, 2021).…”

“…The active engagement of young adults in sustainable development efforts is central to achieving sustainable, inclusive and stable societies (United Nations, 2018). The study by Ali et al (2021) suggested that consumers of the younger age group (18-35 years old) showed a greater preference to purchase sustainable products and may be viewed as consumers of the future. For the aforementioned reasons, young adults who were undergraduates at universities were selected as the target of interest in this study.…”

Public preferences for nutritional, environmental and food safety characteristics of upcycled foods in Sweden

“…This nutritional concept of value‐added food may be more convincing for consumers than the marketing definition. There is a positive association between the nutritional value and purchasing intention of upcycled foods (Ali et al ., 2021).…”

“…Upcycled foods use unmarketable ingredients generated during harvesting, processing and preparation, such as imperfect crops, by‐products and scraps from food preparation (The Upcycled Foods Definition Task Force, 2020) to produce new foods and contribute to the circular economy (Ali et al ., 2021). Upcycled food production returns wasted food to the supply chain to address sustainable food production and food waste management (Moshtaghian et al ., 2021).…”

Challenges for Upcycled Foods: Definition, Inclusion in the Food Waste Management Hierarchy and Public Acceptability

“…Older people are less inclined towards upcycled foods [60,61], but the comparison of different generations shows that middle-aged consumers, overall, have a lower acceptability of upcycled foods compared to younger and older generations [16]. It is worth mentioning that findings for sociodemographic factors are not consistent in all studies [22,60,66] and thus should be interpreted with caution, as the context of each study and the type of upcycled food under investigation were different.…”