Consumers’ Behaviors and Attitudes toward Doggy Bags: Identifying Barriers and Benefits to Promoting Behavior Change

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.

Restaurant food waste and the determinants of its effective management in Bulgaria: An exploratory case study of restaurants in Plovdiv

“…Further, offering doggy bags in Bulgarian restaurants holds significant potential when catering for functions and events as here, similar to the Chinese context (Wang et al 2017), consumers tend to order more food than required during these celebratory occasions which is in order to demonstrate exceptional hospitability to their guests. This is in line with Mirosa et al (2018) such as weddings, we have adopted a practice whereby the food that has remained is put in boxes, packed neatly and given to the organiser of the event. This is because they [clients] always order more food than necessary' (Travis) Donating food to the people in need and/or giving it to own staff can aid in re-distributing surplus restaurant food (Filimonau and de Coteau 2019).…”

Understanding the Effect of Dining and Motivational Factors on Out-Of-Home Consumer Food Waste

“…In all cases, saving money was the strongest motivator for reducing food waste, which was also reflected in the results of this study. The motivator of saving money is used widely in food waste reduction initiatives [9], as it is a motivator that traverses different stages of the food supply chain and resonates with various actors along it.…”

“…The motivators of saving guilt (69%), the environment (60%) and hungry people (49%) were also identified, but to a lesser extent [40]. As a result, New Zealand's Love Food Hate Waste campaign focuses on framing food waste reduction as a cost-saving activity in order to connect with this known motivator for behaviour change [9].…”

“…In Italy, approximately 35% of food is estimated to be consumed out of the home [5]. While household food waste has been researched extensively, there is still limited literature that focuses on out-of-home consumer food waste [9]. Due to an increasing proportion of food being consumed out of the home, there is a need to better understand food waste in this setting [10].…”

“…A survey commissioned by the Restaurant Association found that 45% of New Zealanders consume food in out-of-home settings 1-3 times per week [29]. Due to the frequency with which New Zealanders are consuming food in cafés and restaurants, the contribution of out-of-home plate waste to total food waste in New Zealand is likely to be significant [9]. highlight consumer behaviour as a key target area for food waste reduction in restaurants [15].…”