Bringing habits and emotions into food waste behaviour

By S. Russell, C. Young, Kerrie L. Unsworth, Cheryl A. Robinson. 2017

586 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study examined consumer food waste behaviour using a comprehensive model integrating the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the theory of interpersonal behaviour, and the comprehensive model of environmental behaviour. Using a temporally lagged design, one hundred and seventy-two respondents answered four questionnaires over a period of 14 months. Questionnaires measured emotions in relation to food waste, habits, the TPB variables, intention to reduce food waste, and self-reported food waste behaviour. Results showed that the less well-studied variables of habits and emotions were important determinants of participants’ intentions to reduce food waste and their current food waste behaviour. As expected, we found that negative emotions were associated with greater intentions to reduce food waste, but contrary to our predictions they were also associated with higher levels of food waste behaviour. In other words, participants who experienced more negative emotion when thinking about food waste intended to reduce their waste but actually ended up wasting more food. Results also show that participants with a greater sense of control, and more normative support for reducing food waste also had stronger intentions to engage in the behaviour. Our findings extend existing understanding and underscore the importance of the non-cognitive determinants of behaviour, namely emotions and habits. The implications for research and practice are discussed.

Subfields: Food Science, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6f5e8632c71f579bd16accaa92de98551457d85c

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Citations in the corpus

Pro-environmental behaviors through the lens of the theory of planned behavior: A scoping review (2020, background): “In an attempt to increase the predictive power of the theory, 29% of these publications add one variable (e.g., Mannetti et al., 2004; Muñoz et al., 2016; Russell et al., 2017), while the remaining articles complement the”
“Reduce Food Waste, Save Money”: Testing a Novel Intervention to Reduce Household Food Waste (2019, background): “In the intervention, this idea was molded after Russell et al. (2017), as the positive message of reducing food waste to save money.”
Drivers of food waste reduction behaviour in the household context (2021, background): “The findings are consistent with the propositions of TIB and CEMP, suggesting that anticipated guilt, awareness about consequences, and environmental knowledge were positively associated with food waste reduction intentions (3Rs).”
Green apparel buying behaviour: A Stimulus–Organism–Behaviour–Consequence (SOBC) perspective on sustainability‐oriented consumption in Japan (2021, result): “…found to be a significant predictor of behavioural intentions and actual behaviour by prior studies (e.g., Chuang et al., 2018; Leung & Chen, 2017; Russell et al., 2017) and has also been found to significantly influence individuals' actual behaviour, such as food waste behaviour (Russell et al.,…”