Abstract
Food production and consumption have remarkable negative environmental effects, in particular food waste. Food waste occurs throughout the entire food system, but households make the largest contribution. Reducing unnecessary waste of food represents a crucial step toward overcoming global issues of food waste, hunger, and climate change. Identifying barriers in reducing food waste is important not only to government and policymakers, but also to food producers, retailers, and marketers. Therefore, the objective of this research was to find out how consumer behavior in daily food provisioning affects food waste. An online survey was set up to question Dutch consumers (partly) in charge of the household’s food management. A total of 211 consumers participated in answering questions on household composition, food management behavior (e.g., food purchase planning) and food waste awareness (i.e., concern about wasting food and intention not to waste food). Results show that purchase behavior in-store was the main driver of food waste. Specifically, participants indicated that buying more food than needed often had led to food waste. In addition, intention not to waste food acted as a moderator in the relationship between planning behavior and food waste. Age appears to have a diminishing impact on wasting food.
Highlights
IntroductionMore food waste, are responsible for striking negative effects on the environment [1]
Food production and consumption, and more food waste, are responsible for striking negative effects on the environment [1]
Food losses and food waste occur throughout the entire food supply chain (FSC): households account for 53%, manufacturers for 30%, retailers for 5%, and food service for 12% [3]
Summary
More food waste, are responsible for striking negative effects on the environment [1]. Food losses and food waste occur throughout the entire food supply chain (FSC): households account for 53%, manufacturers for 30% (production and processing), retailers for 5%, and food service for 12% [3]. Based on Searchinger et al [4] Europe is responsible for 22% of the global food waste (with 11% during the consumption stage). There is a consensus in available literature that households contribute greatly to the total amount of food waste, in the Netherlands [2,5,6,7]. Food waste produced by Dutch households was 576 kg per capita in 2006 (while the EU average was 423 kg) [5]
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