Consumer-Related Food Waste: Causes and Potential for Action
By J. Aschemann‐Witzel, I. D. Hooge, Pegah Amani, T. Bech-Larsen, M. Oostindjer. 2015
827 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In the past decade, food waste has received increased attention on both academic and societal levels. As a cause of negative economic, environmental and social effects, food waste is considered to be one of the sustainability issues that needs to be addressed. In developed countries, consumers are one of the biggest sources of food waste. To successfully reduce consumer-related food waste, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the factors influencing food waste-related consumer perceptions and behaviors. The present paper presents the results of a literature review and expert interviews on factors causing consumer-related food waste in households and supply chains. Results show that consumers’ motivation to avoid food waste, their management skills of food provisioning and food handling and their trade-offs between priorities have an extensive influence on their food waste behaviors. We identify actions that governments, societal stakeholders and retailers can undertake to reduce consumer-related food waste, highlighting that synergistic actions between all parties are most promising. Further research should focus on exploring specific food waste contexts and interactions more in-depth. Experiments and interventions in particular can contribute to a shift from analysis to solutions.
Subfields: Food Science, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ffdbf703e9d5dd393745653cbfe0c8b30f138d9c
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Citations in the corpus
- Food Waste and the ‘Green’ Consumer (2017, background): “Aschemann-Witzel et al. (2015) recommend that future research should explore food waste consumer behaviour in greater depth, by focusing on specific segments, foods and contexts.”
- Convenience or price orientation? Consumer characteristics influencing food waste behaviour in the context of an emerging country and the impact on future sustainability of the global food sector (2018, background): “Given that food waste is discussed as related to appreciating food less due to affluence (Aschemann-Witzel et al., 2015), value perception of food and awareness of the price-value relationship should also be relevant.”
- This apple is too ugly for me!: Consumer preferences for suboptimal food products in the supermarket and at home (2017, background): “Moreover, consumers might differ in their perceptions of their household food waste, and of the importance of the food-waste issue set against other societal issues (Aschemann-Witzel et al., 2015).”
- Ten Years of Sustainability (2009 to 2018): A Bibliometric Overview (2018, background): “28 Consumer-related food waste: causes and potential for action [48] Aschemann-Witzel, J.”
- Quantities, Determinants, and Awareness of Households’ Food Waste in Italy: A Comparison between Diary and Questionnaires Quantities’ (2019, neutral): “Beside quantification, the analysis of behaviors associated with food waste is important to define prevention measures [26].”
- Recycling, recovering and preventing “food waste”: competing solutions for food systems sustainability in the United States and France (2016, background): “…stream is generated by practices upstream, such as packaging, promotional offers, and restaurant portion sizes, as well as socially patterned consumption habits such as shopping frequency (Aschemann-Witzel et al., 2015; Evans, 2014; Hawkins, 2012; Le Borgne and Sirieix, 2013; Neff et al., 2015b).”
- Consumers’ Attitudes towards Organic Products and Sustainable Development: A Case Study of Romania (2017, background): “Health issues are considered to be part of the numerous trends which have recently appeared on the food market [24] and seem to have a personal and social value [25].”