Abstract
About one third of all food produced for human consumption is wasted. Along with a lively debate on food loss and waste definition and quantification, growing attention is dedicated to the faceted dimensions of consumers’ food waste. Drivers, effects, and mitigating factors have been mainly studied in isolation, with limited attention paid to their interrelationships. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the underlying relationship between the causes of food waste and consumers’ perception of their role and of their concern on food waste effects and mitigating factors. The article draws on a survey submitted to 938 respondents while shopping at a supermarket in Italy in 2015. Data were processed by principal components to identify latent dimensions of consumer behavior, and a cluster analysis was performed to identify homogenous groups of consumers. Results emphasize the complexity of the relationship between consumers and food resources. They suggest that while consumers are aware about food waste as a global issue, they often fail to identify the individual contribution they might provide for its prevention and reduction. The article also detects three groups of consumers with different approaches to food waste management and a specific perception of the food waste phenomenon.
Highlights
More than one billion tons of food, corresponding to about one third of the all food produced for human consumption, is lost or wasted every year along the value chain (FAO, 2011)
Along with a lively debate on food loss and waste definition and quantification [1,2,3,4,5,6], growing attention is dedicated to the faceted dimensions of consumers’ food waste ([7,8] among others), as in industrialized countries, individuals are considered to be responsible for the larger share of the wasted food [9,10,11]
As for the incentives aimed at reducing household waste, the set of solutions perceived as more effective appears to be very generic, with a limited linkage with the main drivers, and with no reference to individual commitment
Summary
More than one billion tons of food, corresponding to about one third of the all food produced for human consumption, is lost or wasted every year along the value chain (FAO, 2011). This situation has led to an increasing awareness on food waste among the academic world, civil society, and policy makers. All the employed methods present specific limitations that reduce their reliability and explanatory capacity, especially considering food waste quantification [20,21,22,23,24]. What is clearly emerging is that food waste occurring in the home (consumer food waste) has multiple and interrelated drivers that influence the behavior of consumers [25,26]
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