Food waste and the 'green' consumer

McCarthy, Breda;Liu, Hong-Bo

Abstract

While the literature on food waste has examined mainstream consumers, it has tended to overlook ‘green’ consumers. Based on a survey with 346 respondents, techniques such as cross tabulations, non-parametric tests and the ordered probit regression model were used to analyse the data. Variables such as age, making an effort to reduce food waste, guilt and anxiety about wasting food, along with knowledge of expiry dates, were associated with lower levels of food waste. Surprisingly, eating organic food was not linked with a lower propensity to waste food. There did not appear to be a large gap between attitudes towards food waste and actual behaviours. Higher income households, with young children, who eat out a lot, were more likely to waste food. A good deal of food was thrown away due to spoilage, the short shelf-life of fresh food and because people forgot about food left in the fridge. A limitation of the survey is the reliance on self-reported data for food waste. The findings have practical implications for public policy makers who wish to reduce the economic and environmental burden of food waste.

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Australasian Marketing Journal

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1839-3349

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Elsevier

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DOI

10.1016/j.ausmj.2017.04.007