Citizens support ambitious but costly regulation against food waste

Abstract

About one-third of all food produced for human consumption worldwide is wasted, particularly in high-income countries. Reducing this waste is key to decreasing negative environmental impacts from the food sector and increasing food security in developing countries. Yet, achieving food waste reduction is challenging. It is widely presumed that efforts at stronger food waste governance may increase food prices, and hence consumer and citizen opposition that renders effective governance politically unfeasible. Here, we assess this critical presumption and argue that policy framing and design can ensure public support for ambitious but costly food waste governance, while policy feedbacks from voluntary firm actions are unlikely to diminish public support. Our empirical analysis uses survey experiments with a population-representative sample (N=3’329) from a typical high-income country with a unique direct democratic tradition, Switzerland. First, in a combined framing and conjoint experiment, we show that messages emphasizing national or international social norms in favor of reducing food waste (policy framing) can increase public support for more ambitious reduction targets. We also show that a majority of citizens support food waste governance that leads to substantial increases in food prices, but only if such policies set stringent reduction targets and are transparently monitored (policy design). Finally, in a vignette experiment, we show that voluntary industry initiatives do not crowd out individuals’ intentions to reduce their food waste nor support for stronger governmental regulation, but even crowd public support in if industry initiatives are unambitious (policy feedback). Our research offers an analytical template for studying public support for food waste governance and shows that there is more political room for adopting ambitious policies than hitherto presumed.