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The goal of the present research was to resolve two problems with contemporary methods used to assess consumer food waste: the lack of established categories of food wasting behaviours and difficulties in assessing food waste. In Studies 1 A and 1 B, a five-factor questionnaire for measuring food wasting behaviours was developed. Study 2 and Exploratory analyses verified whether the questionnaire allows for predicting the amount of wasted meat, dairy and bakery and a range of socioeconomic characteristics.

Based on pre-registered studies, a new questionnaire for measuring the frequency of food wasting behaviours, the Food Wasting Behaviours Questionnaire (FWBQ), was developed.

The results provided evidence that behaviours associated with food wasting could be narrowed down to five distinctive basic categories: (1) discarding food because of its' unpalatability; (2) preventing food waste through buying only the necessities; (3) preventing food waste through planning; (4) preventing food waste through sharing and (5) preventing food waste through feeding animals. The FWBQ allowed for investigating the socio-economic factors that influence food wasting behaviour. Finally, the FWBQ allowed for predicting the amount of wasted meat, dairy and bakery products. Also, particular factors were associated with a range of socioeconomic characteristics.

The FWBQ has been shown to be an inexpensive and easy-to-use method for systematising distinct categories of food wasting behaviours and demonstrating their determinants. The study takes an empirical approach (rather than intuitive) to distinguish separate categories of food wasting.

People consider food wasting behavior to be immoral. However, it is not clear whether people who consider food wasting behavior immoral waste less food. Building on previous qualitative studies, we conducted a large-sample quantitative study. We examined whether people who consider food wasting behavior immoral display food wasting behaviors less frequently and whether they waste less food in general. Furthermore, we explored the reasons that make people consider food wasting behavior immoral and whether they affected food wasting.

Participants voluntarily (n = 562) completed a set of questionnaires that measured the frequency of their food wasting behavior, the amount of food wasted in the preceding week, and food wasting moral judgments, including scales, which explored the reasons for judging this behavior as immoral.

We found that people who regard food wasting behavior as immoral displayed food wasting behavior less frequently, but did not waste less food than people who did not consider food wasting behavior immoral. Furthermore, we found that there are two categories of reasons for moral disapproval of food wasting behavior: externally oriented (concern for the environment, social issues, and for future generations) and internally oriented (concern for ones’ financial situation, social approval, and going by traditional norms). However, only people whose moral judgments were motivated by externally oriented reasons wasted food less frequently.

Our findings provide evidence that moral judgments influence food wasting behavior and highlight the importance of the content of moral beliefs for predicting behaviors.

Food waste has strong ecological, economical and social implications. Focusing on waste perceptions and behavior according to food types, this paper aims to propose that vice or virtue food categories determine cognitive and behavioral reactions to food waste. The authors examine the psychological mechanism underlying the differential waste perceptions and behavior.

The authors conduct five studies, including a field study, to provide converging evidence that supports this theorization.

This study demonstrates that consumers feel that trashing vice food is more wasteful than trashing virtue food. They are less willing to waste vice food and more comfortable with wasting virtue food. Consequently, they waste more virtue than vice foods. The authors demonstrate that counterfactual thinking explains the food type effect on waste.

This paper provides a conceptual framework for understanding and explaining food waste perceptions and behavior across vice and virtue food categories. This paper identifies counterfactual thinking as underpinning the psychology of waste perceptions and behaviors. The findings extend the growing research on subconscious and unintentional food waste, the food consumption literature and the psychology of waste literature.

The differential waste perceptions and behavior provide several implications for waste interventions and consumer education. By expanding theories of consumer food waste, this paper provides material for educational campaigns aimed at reducing waste and improving healthful eating.

Consumers can benefit from understanding their tendency to avoid wasting vice foods but will waste virtue foods with little compunction. Waste aversion may be a reason people consume vice foods beyond satiation. Consumers may overconsume vice foods because they are so acutely averse to wasting them, with detrimental consequences for health and welfare.

To reduce consumer food waste, one must gain deeper insights into factors shaping consumer food waste perceptions and behavior. Food waste studies have been increasing but have overlooked the power of consumer perceptions in driving food waste consequences. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study has examined how food type affects waste perceptions and behavior. This research fills this gap.

Food waste at the household level represents a major component of all food waste. Therefore minimizing food waste at the household level remains an important component of the food chain responsibility. This study explores the problem of food waste in Mauritius through an understanding of households' attitudes toward food waste and their motivations and barriers to food waste recycling.

The study uses a grounded theory approach to identify thematic categories that represent participants' attitudes toward food waste and the barriers they face to food waste reduction. We used a purposive sampling technique to guide the selection of participants. Interviews were conducted with 14 participants: three experts in food waste and 11 households. The data were analyzed using the tools of grounded theory.

Participants' expressed views on food waste included (1) guilt toward wasting food; (2) (lack of) environmental awareness; (3) financial considerations and (4) exemption from responsibility. The findings also led to the development of four themes that defined the barriers participants face to recycling food waste: (1) lack of awareness; (2) space limitations on recycling methods; (3) inadequate policy and (4) lack of time/priority.

Addressing the problem of food waste requires a holistic approach that takes into account households' attitudes to food waste, their motivation and barriers to food waste recycling as well as the regulatory and institutional framework governing food waste management in Mauritius. Policymakers should try to improve households' knowledge about food waste through educational campaigns. The authorities can provide different types of bins to households freely to facilitate the sorting out of waste and impose a fee for food waste generated beyond a certain limit or provide subsidies to them for handling food waste properly.

The management of food waste is particularly challenging for small islands developing states because of their unique characteristics of smallness, limited resources and environmental vulnerability. Appropriate interventions to reduce household food waste require place-based and geographically sensitive analyses that take into account the specificities of local food and waste management systems and cultural norms with respect to food. However, there is not only a paucity of research on household food waste, but most studies have been carried out in nonisland economies. The study contributes to the limited research on household food waste in small islands.

Food waste behavior in the workplace or work-related gatherings has been less researched compared to that in household context. This study aims to bridge this gap through unfolding how and when quality of food waste prevention communication mitigates food waste behavior among frontline employees in the hospitality workplace.

Participants in this research comprised employees from four- and five-star hotels operating in Vietnam.

The results lent credence to the dual mediation channels of moral attitudes toward food wasting and meaningfulness of food waste reduction for the impact of quality of food waste prevention communication on employees’ food waste reduction intention and their reduced food waste behavior. The contingency role of employees’ green role identity was marginally confirmed for the nexus between employees’ food waste reduction intention and their food waste behavior.

This inquiry advances the understanding of mechanisms underlying work-related food waste behavior among hospitality employees.

Behavioural change practice has focussed attention on understanding behaviour; failing to apply dynamic approaches that capture the underlying determinants of behavioural change. Following recommendations to direct analytical focus towards understanding both the causal factors of behaviour and behavioural change to enhance intervention practice, this paper aims to apply a hidden Markov model (HMM) approach to understand why people transition from one state to another (e.g. reporting changes from wasting food to not wasting food or vice versa).

Data were drawn from a 2017 food waste programme that aimed to reduce waste of fruit and vegetables by increasing self-efficacy through a two-week pilot, featuring recipes and in-store cooking demonstrations. A repeated measure longitudinal research design was used. In total, 314 households completed a phone survey prior to the two-week pilot and 244 completed the survey in the weeks following the intervention (77% retention in the evaluation study).

Two behavioural states were identified, namely, fruit and vegetable (FV) wasters and non-FV wasters. Age was identified as a causal factor for FV food wasting prior to the campaign (45-54 years were most likely to waste FV). Following the intervention, a total of 43.8% transitioned away from FV wasters to non-wasters, and attitudes and self-efficacy were indicated as potential causal factors of this change in FV waste behaviour.

Through this application, it is demonstrated how HMM can identify behavioural states, rates of behaviour change and importantly how HMM can identify both causal determinants of behaviour and behavioural change. Implications, limitations and future research directions are outlined.

Food wastage is a major contributor to pervasive world hunger. Cutting global food waste in half by 2030 is one of the United Nation's top priorities. Hence, this paper aims to provide useful insights on how individual behavior might be influenced to help reduce food wastage and hunger by identifying individual food waste determinants.

A total of 297 useable responses were obtained from a survey using a food diary method. A logit model was employed to estimate the relationship between leftovers and its determinants (preparedness to take own action, price conscious, food review, religiosity, health conscious, cost, marital status and gender).

Results show that preparedness to be responsible for one's actions, depending on food reviews and being waste conscious had a significant positive relationship with food waste reducing behavior, along with being male and being married.

The study suggests that there is scope for policy initiatives to reduce the individual utility from discarding food and increase the individual utility from food saving activities. Penalizing individual or household food wastage through a tax will directly raise the cost of wastage and reduce the net utility from discarding food. Reducing food waste could help reduce global hunger.

Rationally, no one will have any intention to waste when buying food. Instead, in the context of deciding whether or not to leave leftover food, an individual is posited to weigh the potential utility from saving food or throwing it away. Thus, this study examines food waste behavior by utilizing economic tools, which is rare in the food waste literature.

Scholarly research on food waste is growing, but it tends to focus on households in general. The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitudes of green consumers towards food waste, reasons for wasting edible food and acceptance of policy actions that could help address the food waste challenge.

Based on a quantitative survey of 346 respondents, frequency distributions, cross tabulations and non-parametric tests were performed.

This study finds that there is inconsistency between attitudes and behaviours. Green consumers, including those who value organic food and vegetarianism, waste quite a lot of edible food. Food is thrown away mainly due to spoilage, short shelf life, being forgotten in the fridge and eating outside the home. Hence, consumers, even those with the best of intentions, face behavioural constraints when it comes to reducing food waste. A surprising finding is that some consumers lack awareness of the environmental burden posed by food waste. Several policy measures to reduce food waste are acceptable to the respondents

Reliance on self-reported data for food waste.

The research identifies actions that local governments could undertake to reduce consumer-related food waste. An environmental awareness campaign targeting green consumers could correct information deficits.

The focus on the green segment has practical implications for reducing the economic and environmental burden of food waste

This paper aims to identify Australian consumer segments based on sustainable lifestyles and attitudes towards food waste and model the factors (socio-demographic, attitudinal and lifestyle) contributing to different levels of food waste.

This study uses a face-to-face survey of 334 respondents. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to identify consumer segments, and econometric analysis is used to model the factors contributing to different levels of food waste.

A total of six lifestyle segments are identified: the freshness lovers, the vegetarian and organic food lovers, the recycle/reuse advocates, the waste-conscious consumers, the label-conscious/sensory consumer and the food waste defenders. This research distinguishes between low and medium levels of food waste based on marginal effects analysis. At low levels of food waste, consumers who worry about the food waste cost, making efforts to reduce food waste are less likely to waste food. Affluent consumers, who claim to be waste conscious, have young children and frequently eat outside, are more likely to waste food than others, lying in the medium waste group.

Australia, like many other countries, has high levels of food waste and despite policy efforts, curbing household food waste remains a challenge. In addition, there are limited food waste studies that focus on consumers who practice sustainable lifestyles. The current paper contributes to the market segmentation literature and has several implications for food policy and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of behavioral interventions and nudging in dealing with the food waste problem. In particular, the authors implement an information campaign aiming to increase consumers’ awareness of the food waste problem.

In the period of three weeks, the authors observe intentions to prevent food waste and actual food waste of the consumers in a university restaurant serving ready meals. During the intervention period, consumers are exposed to an information campaign, designed to avoid consumers’ insufficient planning problem.

Consumers are willing to pay the same price for less food more often during the campaign than before the campaign, but the approximated impact on the food waste is not significant. Social emotions of guilt and shame are linked to consumers’ intentions to prevent food waste, suggesting channels to be included in a successful information campaign nudging consumers toward food waste reduction.

The authors were not able to measure precisely food waste, but observed consumers in a real-life context. Consumers were not aware of the study, and made daily purchase decisions before and after the information campaign.

Consumer behavior is at the core of the food waste problem in developed countries. It is important to understand how consumers can be nudged at low cost, using an information campaign, to change their attitude to food waste, and to decrease food waste.

The authors collected an original dataset on the impact of an information campaign, observing behavior of consumers in a real-life context.