Nudging in Food Waste Management: Where Sustainability Meets Cost-Effectiveness

Abstract

Food waste in the hospitality industry is a major problem, and solutions to change wasteful behaviours in professional kitchens are scarce. De Visser-Amundson and Kleijnen contribute to this knowledge gap by exploring how nudging can be used to stimulate employees to save more food without impacting the customer experience. In a field setting with a perspective of cost-effective service excellence (CESE), they specifically show that cost-saving behaviours realised by either a social norms nudge or a pre-commitment nudge are promising paths to explore as solutions to reduce food waste in professional kitchens and to achieve CESE. To that effect, the social norms and the pre-commitment nudge reduced daily food waste with 25.02% and with 33.50%, respectively.