Abstract
Although previous studies have discussed food waste at the household level and the antecedents of food disposal in western countries, very few studies have investigated food waste practices in Asian countries at the household or individual levels. As the food waste issue has drawn considerable concerns, the aim of this study was to examine how moral norms, perceived behavioral control, and food choices affect household food waste under the mediating role of household storing and cooking routines, as well as the moderating role of unplanned events. A questionnaire survey of Taiwanese families eventually obtained 954 valid questionnaires for analysis. Overall model fit and the study hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling method (SEM). The SEM results showed that household storing and cooking routines significantly mediate the effects of moral norms and food choices on household food waste. Moreover, the moderating effect of unplanned events is statistically significant, indicating that under a higher degree of unplanned events, families are less likely to reduce food waste through household storage practices and cooking routines. Several implications and suggestions are also discussed for the reduction of household food waste.
Highlights
Household food waste can be defined as all drink and food that, at some point before being thrown away, was edible [1,2,3]
The results revealed that, in Taiwanese families, moral norms have a significant positive effect on household food storing and cooking routines
The theory of planned behavior (TPB) literature on household food waste shows no consistent finding for the relationships among moral norms, intention to reduce food waste, and food waste [2,3,6]
Summary
Household food waste can be defined as all drink and food that, at some point before being thrown away, was edible [1,2,3]. Studies applying TPB on studying household food waste have had two problems: (1) the problem of the intention–behavior gap [5], whereby individual intentions to avoid food waste may not lead to actual food waste prevention behaviors; (2) the relatively small behavioral variances accounted for by the TPB model [6]. Khalid et al [10] confirmed that major reasons of household food waste include poor planning of meals, improper cooking, and cooking too much food. Based on these recent qualitative findings, food storing and cooking routines should not be neglected in household food waste prevention. The current study aimed to investigate whether household storing and cooking routines significantly reduce household food waste
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