Characteristics of food‐wasting consumers in the Czech Republic

Abstract

This paper investigates food waste at the consumer stage of the food chain. The authors conducted a questionnaire survey with 259 respondents to identify the key characteristics of food-wasting consumers and to suggest strategies to improve food-wasting behaviour. The results of the survey confirmed that the rate at which food is wasted depends on the age, economic status and education of the person managing food in a household, on the household's income per person and on total household income. Younger people, students, economically active people and people from higher-income households (both per household and per person) waste more, while pensioners waste much less than other groups. However, the sex of the food manager is not associated with food waste. These demographic characteristics should be considered when designing consumer education campaigns focussed on changing consumer motivation and behaviour. This paper also recommends other solutions tailored for specific demographic groups: Younger people and students may be influenced by the actions of opinion leaders within social networks, and technical devices enabling better food management could help them reduce waste. Supporting work-life balance, broadening the network of food delivery services and implementing corporate initiatives that support food waste prevention could help economically active people reduce their food waste.Additionally, offers of ready-to-eat food should be expanded for people with higher incomes. K E Y W O R D Scharacteristics of food wasters, consumer education, food waste, household, sustainable

Food Wastage as a Display of Consumer Behaviour

“…Single-person households generate more food waste than other types of households, with higher-income households and households in cities also found to waste more (Tokareva & Eglite, 2017). Filipová et al (2017) also state that consumers from higher-income households waste more as well as younger consumers and economically active consumers, while pensioners waste less than other groups. Ilakovac et al (2020) add that the age of respondents positively affected the prevention of waste, while the income level and the number of children under the age of 18 in the household had an adverse impact.…”

“…Among the factors affecting the origin of food waste, demographic factors, household size, and economic activity can be delineated, as well as, last but not least, the price of food that households buy. Demographic factors such as age or gender are usually crucial in all areas of consumer behavior (Mokrysz, 2016) and should be taken into account when designing consumer education campaigns focused on changing behavior (Filipová et al, 2017). According to Talia et al (2019), the size of the household plays a fundamental role as well as the gender and education of household consumers.…”

“…When a household has an income below the poverty level it is called a low-income household living at risk of poverty (Halleröd & Larsson, 2008). Higher-income households waste more than the low-income households (Filipová et al, 2017). On the other hand, Porpino et al (2015) add that a low-income household also wastes, e.g.…”

Call for testing interventions to prevent consumer food waste

“…The identification of the target group(s) and barriers and benefits of the target behavior (e.g., Lee & Kotler, 2015;McKenzie & Mohr, 2013;Schultz, 2014) is 23 For experimental/field studies and practical evaluations in monitored settings (e.g., school, restaurant), it might be useful to review the broad literature on food consumption research and analyze the various developed and applied unobtrusive approaches to measuring food intake, e.g., by weighing food before and after consumption, direct observation (live human rating), or indirect observation (photograph analysis) (see e.g., Kenney closely related to defining target behaviors. The finding that sociodemographics (e.g., age, sex, number of children/adults in the household) predict food waste behavior irrespective of TPB constructs (Visschers et al, 2016) illustrates the importance of sociodemographic and situational and/or contextual factors in understanding consumer food waste behavior (Filipová, Mokrejšová, Šulc, & Zeman, 2017). Just recently, academic food waste research started to segment consumers into key target groups and discuss specific leverage points for these segments (e.g., Delley &Brunner, 2017;Gaiani, Caldeira, Adorno, Segrè, & Vittuari, 2017).…”

Exploring the Drivers behind Self-Reported and Measured Food Wastage

“…The scientific literature presents a somewhat obscure picture regarding the exact relationship between income and household food waste. There is evidence that low-income households waste less food [44,[72][73][74], which might be explained by resource scarcity [10]. However, Setti [75] demonstrated that mid-to-low-income consumers wasted more food compared to low-and high-income consumers.…”