Search results

This study aims to explore ways to minimize plate waste at university canteens by studying plate waste and consumers at three main canteens of a university, Thailand.

Using university canteens in Thailand as a case, plate waste was characterized and quantified and consumers’ insights concerning food consumption practices were examined through focus group discussion.

The results revealed that each consumer wasted edible food around 19 grams/meal. The generation of plate waste is affected by the food provision system, including canteen setting, food purchasing procedure and food quality. In addition, the presence of stray dogs in the canteens inhibited consumers from finishing up their food. Thus, improving the food provision system is crucial to engage consumers in achieving zero plate waste.

This research sheds some light on ways to engage consumers in sustainable consumption and contributes to the knowledge on plate waste and sustainable consumption in university settings. Improving food quality and canteen settings are of importance to better engage consumers. In addition, this research revealed that concepts of system of provision and citizen-consumers are practical to analyze sustainable transformations for green university initiatives.

This study used the literature review and the modified Delphi method to evaluate the importance of the catering quality indices of university canteens in China. In order to compile the catering quality indices of university canteens in China as reference for the subsequent improvement of Chinese canteens.

This study first analysed literature data to establish the preliminary quality indices and used the modified Delphi method for measurement. After three rounds of Delphi analysis by 35 experts, the results of the catering quality indices of university canteens in China are summarised.

The research results show that university canteen catering quality issues are divided into six dimensions, including catering safety management, employee hygiene management, catering service, food quality, environmental atmosphere and corporate social responsibility. Catering safety management is the most important index, followed by employee hygiene management.

The research results can be used as suggestions for follow-up improvements in the quality of university canteens in China and a basis of reference for amendments to relevant national or local laws and regulations. The food prices, food quality and whether food hygiene and safety standards are met by university canteens are all related to the health and vital interests of the teachers and students, as well as the stability of the university. Therefore, the government should increase supervision in these aspects to avoid decline in the quality of meals due to low profits and enforce strict requirements for food safety.

This study aims to examine the availability of worksite canteens to Finnish employees, and the associations between canteen availability and the employee's sociodemographic background and workplace characteristics. A further aim was to study the employees’ lunch place choices according to the sociodemographic factors of the employees and the characteristics of the workplace when a worksite canteen is available.

Data were obtained from cross‐sectional health surveys among Finnish adults in 2005‐2007. A total of 2,659 male and 2,926 female employed Finns – except farmers – ranging in age from 19 to 64 were chosen for the analyses from the surveys. The data were analyzed by multiple logistic regression models.

A worksite canteen was available for 70 percent of female and 60 percent of male employees, and more often to employees with higher education and in a higher occupational class and to those working at bigger workplaces. If a canteen was not available, employees mostly ate packed lunches. Roughly 50 percent of those who had a worksite canteen available ate there; employees in a higher occupational class did so more often than the others. Even when a canteen was available, people with lower education or in a lower occupational class preferred packed lunches.

The frequency of using worksite canteens could be influenced not only by means related to individual choices, but also by improving the structural conditions at work – like unavailability of worksite canteen – that is found to pose barrier to canteen use.

No previous study of this kind has been done, even though it has been observed that worksite canteen meals are important for the nutrition, health, and productivity of Finnish employees.

This study aims to evaluate the generation of food waste in a university and the handling efficiency of an automatic waste collection system.

The quantity of food waste generated and collected from a university canteen was surveyed. The food waste handling efficiencies using manual collection strategy and automated food waste collection system were determined by the density of food waste. Life-cycle costing analysis was done to evaluate the economic impacts of various food waste collection methods.

As compared with the manual collection approach, the automatic system can improve the food waste handling efficiency by 30% (from 0.01 to 0.007 bin kg⁻¹) and reduce the water use by 20% (from 0.512 to 0.406 L kg⁻¹); however, it also consumes 4.4 times more energy (from 0.005 to 0.027 kWh kg⁻¹). Under ideal system operation, the 10-year cost of food waste collection was significantly reduced from $3.45 kg⁻¹ in the manual collection to $1.79 kg⁻¹, and the payback period of the system collection was 1.9 years without discount.

The outcomes of this study show that an automatic food waste collection system is feasible, and it is recommended for small- and medium-sized catering facilities (e.g. canteens and food courts) to improve food waste handling efficiency. This study also provides useful reference data of automatic food waste collection systems for planning food waste management programs for catering facilities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the waste handling efficiency, operational expenditure and life-cycle cost of a small-scale automatic food waste collection system.

Reducing food waste is one of the critical challenges of campus canteens. This study aims to test an extended theory of planned behaviour that incorporates moral norm, food taste and campus food-saving climate to understand the influence factors of food waste behaviour on campuses.

To evaluate the proposed model, an online survey was utilized to collect 513 valid questionnaires.

The findings suggest that (1) attitudes towards food waste, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control have a significant influence on intention to reduce food waste; (2) Moral norm and food taste are shown to have a favourable effect on the intention to reduce food waste; (3) Food waste behaviour is significantly determined by intention to reduce food waste; (4) Campus food-saving climate negatively moderates the relationship between intention to reduce food waste and food waste behaviour.

This study paves the way to enhance the understanding of the factors of food waste among college students. In addition, this study develops practical strategies to prevent large amounts of food from being wasted on campus.

To achieve sustainable development to protect the environment and society, an increasing number of scholars have conducted in-depth research on sustainable and responsible consumption behaviors. The outputs demonstrate that consumers are increasingly concerned and aware of the issues associated with the excessive use of resources. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the validity and reliability of the Sustainable Consumption Scale (SC-S) in the Spanish context.

The adaptation of SC-S to Spanish was carried out in accordance with international methodological standards. The Spanish version of this scale was applied empirically to the research sample was composed of 962 university students (49.1% male and 50.9% female) from 54 Universities in 15 regions of Spain that participated in the study.

The analyses carried out to verify the psychometric properties retained 16 items from the original proposal, grouped equally in three factors: Cognitive – six items; Affective – seven items; and Conative – four items. The scale presented adequate adjustment indexes, as well as optimal values of the different measures of reliability, recommended by the literature.

This instrument can be used by the Spanish academic community, which will contribute to the assessment and prediction regarding a sustainable consumption attitude. From these screenings, it will be also possible to understand the impact and development of the objectives outlined by Agenda 2030.

Presents an approach to optimize the service configurations of a student canteen utilizing computer simulation and a total cost function that incorporates both the cost of services and the cost of waiting. The cost of waiting is measured in terms of the impact of waiting on the customer satisfaction and the resulting changes in future repurchases. By collecting data of waiting time and customer satisfaction from a student canteen, first evaluates the impact of waiting time on customer satisfaction and future purchase frequency. Subsequently develops a simulation model to simulate the service processes and waiting line behavior at the student canteen. By varying the number of servers at the two different stages of services and calculating the total cost per customer served, the performance of the system was optimized considering both the service cost and the cost of waiting in term of its impact on future purchases. The approach presented can be used with modification in designing service configurations for a variety of service organizations.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a pivotal role in fostering economic development by cultivating skilled workforce and generating knowledge and innovation. However, HEIs may pose a potential risk to sustainable economic development due to the generation of food waste inside their campus canteens. Therefore, this study aims to examine the influence of attitude, subjective norm (SN), perceived behavior control (PBC), religiosity and pro-social behavior among State Islamic Religious College (SIRC) students on their intention to avoid food waste behavior. This study also focused on the mediating role of the three original theory of planned behavior (TPB) variables and pro-social behavior in the relationship between religiosity and the intention to reduce food waste.

Questionnaires were used to collect data from 443 students at SIRC. The collected data were processed and analyzed using structural equation modelling to test direct, indirect and mediating effects.

The empirical results indicated that the eagerness of students at SIRC to reduce their behavior of leaving food behind can be driven by their negative attitudes or views toward food waste, the practice of religious teachings in their lives, the belief that they can avoid food waste and their concern for the environment. The empirical results reveal that even though religiosity influences SN, it is unable to strengthen the relationship between religiosity and the desire to be anti-food waste.

In addition to contributing to the food waste literature in the context of eating behavior, the results of this study have theoretical and practical implications.

To assess SIRC students’ behavioral intentions to avoid food waste behavior, this study used a contemporary setting to measure attitude, SN, PBC, religiosity and pro-social behavior, so strengthening the TPB’s empirical underpinning.

In this article, we identify various foodservice-related attributes that are important for undergraduate students residing in hostels and avail service from specific foodservice providers. We also investigate the performance of attributes to determine areas where the foodservice providers should maintain a high performance or where improvement is required.

We apply the Kano methodology to design the questionnaire for 24 different attributes. For each attribute, we construct three questions; namely, functional type, dysfunctional type, and performance of the hostel foodservice. We collect a total of 317 responses. We use multiple methods to determine the dominant category. Finally, combining the values of these methods, we study relative positions of the attributes in the importance–performance grid.

Based on the Kano categorization, quality-related attributes are most important, followed by hygiene, comfort, availability, variety, and time, in the descending order. The gender of the respondent plays an important role in categorization of some attributes. Using the importance–performance analysis, we identify the attributes where the foodservice provider should maintain a high performance or where improvement is required. Improvements in some attributes are difficult due to foodservice provider's self-assessment of high performance or high difficulty for improvement.

In this study, we examine the importance of various foodservice attributes among undergraduate residential students. We combine multiple methods of Kano categorization to compute importance values of the attributes. We also investigate the reasons behind the gap between student's and foodservice manager's perception of the performance of these attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding about the determinants of consumer food leftovers in out-of-home settings by taking a decomposed perspective on attitudes.

Data on 307 guests in a university canteen composing of stated measures for 12 beliefs, general attitude and behavioral intention and of visually estimated food leftovers are analyzed using exploratory factor and path analyses.

A factor analysis for belief statements derives three distinctive and potentially conflicting attitude dimensions: “Environment,” “Self-Interest” and “Resources.” Path analyses on their interrelation with general attitude, intention and behavior indicate that the dimensions have distinctive effects. Moreover, “Self-Interest” in contrast to the other two dimensions is correlated with situational perceptions about portion size and taste when these are included as direct determinants of leftovers.

It is recommended to consider different dimensions of attitude when addressing food leftover behavior since these dimensions may not be well represented in a classical summary construct and since their relevance may differ depending on situational factors. Additional research is recommended to validate the results for more representative samples of consumers and to elaborate on the interaction of different attitude dimensions as potential source of attitude ambivalence which cannot clearly be determined from the existing data.

Past research on consumer food waste behavior models attitudes exclusively as a summary construct. This contradicts qualitative findings that individuals may hold conflicting beliefs about food leftovers.