Household Food Waste: A Case Study in Southern Italy

Abstract

To achieve the goal of reducing consumer-related food waste in developed countries, it is necessary to have an in-depth understanding of the factors shaping food waste, both in the household as well as at the point of purchase. Despite a growing number of studies on the subject, especially in recent years, the evidence on drivers of food waste and barriers to its reduction is somewhat conflicting. The current paper contributes to existing knowledge on food waste behaviour at the consumer level, providing original results from a direct survey conducted with a sample randomly selected in southern Italy to reveal consumer awareness, concerns and intentions towards food waste and to ascertain the existence of different consumer profiles with similar food waste behaviour. Since southern Italian regions have been shown to produce lower levels of food waste than regions in northern Italy, an in-depth analysis of the drivers behind food waste in this area could be considered an interesting case study. Our findings showed the existence of several consumer behaviour profiles that influenced household food waste generation. Strategies to reduce waste should take such differences into account in order to promote changes in food waste behaviour.Sustainability 2020, 12, 1495 2 of 13 the household level make it difficult for commercial actors as well as policy makers to develop effective food waste reduction campaigns [6].In order to reduce food waste in developed countries, it is necessary to gain an in-depth understanding of the factors determining food waste at the consumer level, both in the household as well as at the point of purchase. Identified social drivers connected to consumer behaviour and lifestyles are related to (a) unconscious preferences, such as preferences for certain aesthetic standards or food types, that can be difficult to modify; (b) individual behaviour that may be modifiable through information and strengthened awareness; and (c) sociodemographic factors [3,4,7].Regarding individual behaviour, consumers' routines related to shopping and consumption constitute one of the main drivers of food waste, such as food overprovisioning during shopping, overpreparation and incorrect storage [8]. Among the causes identified for overprovisioning, the literature includes bulk purchases but also marketing and sales strategies implemented by producers and retailers [7,9]. Extensive research shows that communication strategies as well as promotional offers have a considerable negative effect on individual wasteful behaviour, prompting consumers to buy more than actually needed [5,[10][11][12]. Other studies have highlighted that individual wasteful behaviour is also driven by factors related to current legislation or policy. Misinterpretation of date labels, for example, or lack of understanding and following labelling instructions for proper storage are recognised as prominent drivers [4,5]. Previous studies showed that European consumers seem to be very confused and show difficulty in interpreting the actual meanin...

Households’ Food Waste Behavior at Local Scale: A Cluster Analysis after the COVID-19 Lockdown

“…In other words, still immature, unconscious and irresponsible. With regard to previous studies conducted in Southern Italy through cluster analysis [73], Southern Italian regions began to produce lower amounts of food waste compared to the Northern ones. Post-pandemic, as illustrated by the present results, this trend seems to have even intensified.…”

The Effect of Consumer Perception on Food Waste Behavior of Urban Households in China

“…In Tehran, every consumer in household wastes about 27.6 kg of edible food annually and about 25 million tons of food go wasted or lost in Iran [24]. Because of the importance attached to this issue, an increasing number of studies on household food waste have been published in recent years [25][26][27][28][29][30].…”

Household Food Consumption and Wastage during the COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak: A Comparison between Peru and Brazil

“…Hence, poor purchase planning is detrimental to the family budget [43,52], which means that planning is an indicator of responsible shopping, and its application reduces food wastage [53,[55][56][57]. Planning and shopping routines include checking food stocks at home and preparing a shopping list [12,20,29,30,32,36,38,50,51,53,55,[58][59][60], and budget availability, thereby reducing excessive purchases and, in turn, subsequent wastage [60]. In addition, shopping frequency exerts an influence on food wastage [20,27,29,49,50], and in situations of crisis and uncertainty, purchases should be carefully planned to avoid impulsive in-store shopping behaviors [20,35,61].…”

“…Excessive buying is caused by marketing and sales strategies applied by food producers and distributors [13], which, through their communication and promotion, impact residential food wastage, as customers buy more products than they actually need [29,62,63]. Furthermore, food-wastage amounts are even greater when food items are purchased in bulk at large supermarkets because of the sizes of the packages they sell [23,29,49,54,58]. However, shopping at small and local markets and stores, where different sizes are available, allows customers to select only what they actually need [23,49].…”

“…As sociodemographic characteristics also influence the amount of food wasted [27,35,63,71], several studies have found significant relationships between household waste and the sociodemographic characteristics of members of the household, such as age [15,31,50,53,66,69,71], family income, and number of household members [15,23,27,50,53,59], as well as gender [50], educational level [42,50,58,69], and occupation [35] of the purchasing decision-makers. In this sense, household size influences food wastage because households with few members waste less food and people living alone waste even less [71].…”