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1 – 10 of over 59000Michal Misiak, Malgorzata Sobol, Lukasz Sakowski, Marta Kowal, Aleksandra Jurczyk and Lidia Wojtycka
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on pre-registered studies, a new questionnaire for measuring the frequency of food wasting behaviours, the Food Wasting Behaviours Questionnaire (FWBQ), was developed.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Michal Misiak, Daniel Kruger, Jessica Sloan Kruger and Piotr Sorokowski
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
Our findings provide evidence that moral judgments influence food wasting behavior and highlight the importance of the content of moral beliefs for predicting behaviors.
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Hervé Corvellec and Johan Hultman
The purpose of this paper is to show that organizational change depends on societal narratives – narratives about the character, history, or envisioned future of societies.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show that organizational change depends on societal narratives – narratives about the character, history, or envisioned future of societies.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study of a Swedish municipal waste management company serves as an illustration.
Findings
Swedish waste governance is powered by two main narratives: “less landfilling” and “wasting less”. Less landfilling has been the dominant narrative for several decades, but wasting less is gaining momentum, and a new narrative order is establishing itself. This new narrative order significantly redefines the socio‐material status of waste and imposes major changes on waste management organizations.
Research limitations/implications
Based on the case of waste governance in Sweden, the authors conclude that organizations should be aware that societal narrative affects the legitimacy and nature of their operations; therefore, they must integrate a watch for narrative change in their strategic reflections.
Originality/value
This paper establishes the relevance of the notion of societal narrative to understand organizational change.
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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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conduct five studies, including a field study, to provide converging evidence that supports this theorization.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
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.
Practical implications
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.
Social implications
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.
Originality/value
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.
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This paper aims to present an objective overview of the factual discourse around the wasting nature of real estate for an appreciation of the resultant exacting management…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present an objective overview of the factual discourse around the wasting nature of real estate for an appreciation of the resultant exacting management responsibility. The durability feature of real estate has had consequential implications on the appreciation of the asset class.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses literature survey and key informant interview to identify the peculiar features of real estate to understand the exacting responsibility of its ownership and management.
Findings
The study reveals that real estate is a specialised investment asset that requires extra management care, costs and specialised expertise to retain its investment value. Thus, the asset is not inherently perpetual but wasting and requires conscious physical and functional management, which are dependent on sound financial management.
Practical implications
Real estate investment decisions must be made with the exacting management responsibility in mind. Both individual and corporate investors must use a sinking fund policy to meet the financial liability involved in managing both income and non-income properties. The Government of Ghana must create a National Infrastructure Maintenance Fund and adopt a National Infrastructure Management Strategy for managing the existing stock of public real estate.
Originality/value
It is the first literature appraisal and facts collation on the wasting nature of real estate and its attendant exacting management responsibility with a call for paradigm shift in our understanding of this investment asset.
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Robin Nunkoo, Meetali Bhadain and Shabanaz Baboo
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Practical implications
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.
Originality/value
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.
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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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
Participants in this research comprised employees from four- and five-star hotels operating in Vietnam.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
This inquiry advances the understanding of mechanisms underlying work-related food waste behavior among hospitality employees.
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Patricia David, Sharyn Rundle-Thiele and Jason Ian Pallant
Behavioural change practice has focussed attention on understanding behaviour; failing to apply dynamic approaches that capture the underlying determinants of behavioural change…
Abstract
Purpose
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).
Design/methodology/approach
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).
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Reta Lemessa, Gudeta Aga, Ararso Tafese and Temesgen Senbeto
This study aims to examine the differences within individuals and clusters in nutritional status and identify socioeconomic factors in the nutritional status of under-five…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the differences within individuals and clusters in nutritional status and identify socioeconomic factors in the nutritional status of under-five children in Ethiopia.
Design/methodology/approach
A weighted sub-sample of 5,270 under-five children was drawn from the under-five children data set of the Ethiopian 2019 Mini Demographic and Health Survey. Multilevel modeling was used to look at the association between the nutritional status of children with predictors.
Findings
The proportion of stunting, underweight and wasting among under-five children were 39.3%, 28.6% and 16.3%, respectively. The observed Global Moran Index’s value for child malnutrition (stunting, wasting and underweight) prevalence in Ethiopia were I = 0.204 for stunting, I = 0.152 for wasting and I = 0.195 for underweight at p = 0.000 was statistically significant indicating that spatial variability of malnutrition of under-five children across survey clusters and regions was observed. Moreover, the result of heterogeneity between clusters obtained for stunting, underweight and wasting was significant providing evidence of variation among regional clusters concerning the status of nutrition of under-five children. Child’s age in months, breastfeeding, family educational level, wealth index, place of residence, media access and region were highly significantly associated with childhood malnutrition. The inclusion of the explanatory variables has shown a significant impact on the variation in malnutrition among regions.
Practical implications
Enhance education, expanding the activities regarding nutritional and health services using media, health extension workers, and health institutions.
Originality/value
The study provides the malnutrition situation status of Ethiopian country when the survey carried out.
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Grotesque wasting has been, and is, generated in a series of spatial levels or scales and in association with accelerated growth rates. A key political challenge for environmental…
Abstract
Grotesque wasting has been, and is, generated in a series of spatial levels or scales and in association with accelerated growth rates. A key political challenge for environmental sustainability in the approaching post–consumerist phase of globalisation is to innovate, plan and implement a fresh waste future as part of the wider evolving green revolution. This challenge of addressing the structures and practices of wasting can only be pursued through a multiplex response in production, governance, consumption patterns, scientific advances, national mindset and personal attitudes.