Determinants of consumer food waste behaviour: Two routes to food waste

Food Waste Drivers in Europe, from Identification to Possible Interventions

“…In fact, it seems that they act as background factors, which not only cause unawareness as regards the quantities of FW individually generated, the related environmental problems and the possible benefits from a more efficient food use, but also induce FW from conducts such as mishandling of food products, inadequate management and planning of home activities related to food (e.g., shopping, management of home storage, meal preparation) and misunderstanding of food labelling, and exposes consumers to potentially negative effects of some form of advertising that may stimulate bad practices (e.g., bulk offers and packaging sizes that induce over-shopping in consumers). Applications of the theory of planned behaviour have shown the relevant role played by perceived behavioural control in the performance of correct FW behaviours by individuals [12,14,22,27,177,183]. Hence, consumer driven FW can be reduced by influencing directly social attitudes through awareness and education campaigns, but also indirectly through forms of sustainable marketing and advertising, more attentive to the possible impacts of behaviours encouraged in consumers.…”

“…Some distinctive characteristics of the urban households show significant correlations with the amount of FW individually produced. Households consisting of few members or one single person, of young members, of children, and relatively high income seem to be the features that are mostly related with higher FW production per capita [9,[13][14][15][16]22,30,55,104,[146][147][148][149][150][151]. Direct comparisons between urban and rural households indicate that the former are significantly higher FW producers [15,152].…”

“…Beyond these basic factors, several studies and surveys have found that consumers' culinary skills and, more generally, information and awareness on the wider implications of food (e.g., nutritional properties and related dietary effects, conditions of safe use, cultural aspects, social and environmental implications) have a positive correlation with a reduced generation of FW in the households, since they contribute to create a positive attitude towards good practices at different levels: planning of food shopping and meals at home, food storage, meal preparation and portioning, reuse of leftovers and optimisation of food available at home, donation of the food that cannot be consumed for any reason, and sorting of kitchen waste [13][14][15]17,22,25,104,134,147,153,154,158,[175][176][177].…”

“…Three main types of motivations can be identified in the available literature: economic, i.e., the possibility to save money by reducing FW; personal gratification from performing efficiently food-related duties, being in control of the problem, and not feeling guilt for FW; environmental and humanitarian motivations, such as to contribute to a reduction of the FSC environmental impacts, existence of people hungry or in economic straits who can benefit from distribution of food surpluses, and social immorality of FW. In general, the economic motivation figures as the main reason for consumers to avoid FW, followed by personal gratification, while socio-environmental reasons are the weakest motivators [18,22,25,27,147,148,175,181,182]. A survey published in 2009 by The Australian Institute [148] even found that the mean value of the food yearly wasted by consumers motivated by money savings in their practices of FW avoidance was significantly lower than the mean value of the food wasted by consumers motivated by environmental or humanitarian reasons.…”

Determinants of Plate Leftovers in One German Catering Company

“…Generally, the TPB is a behavioral model that has extensively been applied for individual health and food related behaviors [29,[34][35][36][37][38]. It states that behavior can be determined by measuring behavioral intention [39].…”