A National Strategy to Reduce Food Waste at the Consumer Level (2020) / Chapter Skim
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6 A Research Agenda for Improving Interventions to Reduce Food Waste and Their Implementation
6 A Research Agenda for Improving Interventions to Reduce Food Waste and Their Implementation
Pages 155-168
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From page 155... ...
The research gaps relate to two distinct but interconnected areas: • understanding drivers of consumer behavior and designing inter ventions to change that behavior, and • understanding how promising interventions can be implemented effectively. UNDERSTANDING DRIVERS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND DESIGNING INTERVENTIONS TO CHANGE THAT BEHAVIOR Although research in the area of food waste, particularly at the consumer level, is expanding rapidly, there remains a need for research to better understand the drivers of consumer waste within the food system and how that understanding can be translated into effective interventions.
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Advances in this area are important because they will help in improving current interventions and designing novel interventions to reduce food waste at the consumer level. Understanding Consumers and the Food Environment in the United States Further understanding of consumers and the U.S.
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For example, if it is possible to shape food waste behaviors away from home, it may be possible to design interventions that are universally useful, building new habits that consumers from many different populations and communities incorporate into their practices at home. Further, policies, such as those related to international trade and pricing mechanisms, affect the cost of food, what food is produced, how much is produced, and where.
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The need for such follow-up is reinforced by the fact that research in the six related domains explored by the committee yielded few insights about how intervention effects persist over time (Abrahamse and Steg, 2013; Koop et al., 2019; Nisa et al., 2019; Snyder, 2007; Varotto and Spagnolli, 2017) or about to undo old and create new habits, how to prolong and reinforce newly formed habits, and how interventions may differ between those that target one-off and infre quent behaviors and those that target habits (Koop et al., 2019)
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Systematic reviews in the six related domains corroborate the need to use formative research, monitoring research, and evaluative research to design interventions, monitor their implementation, and evaluate how implementation affects an intervention's impacts (Snyder, 2007)
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However, the following sections explain the importance of stakeholders' systematic engagement in implementation and of their considering it essential to realizing the desired outcomes of interventions. The Importance of Considering the Dissemination and Implementation of Interventions A number of interventions designed to reduce food waste at the consumer level have shown positive results, and this report calls for new interventions to be developed and researched.
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The importance of doing so has been highlighted by implementation researchers in other fields. For example, the concept of "designing for dissemination" -- defined as "an active process that helps to ensure that public health interventions, often evaluated by researchers, are developed in ways that match well with adopters' needs, assets, and time frames" -- responds to evidence about the ineffectiveness of passive dissemination approaches, the importance of engaging stakeholders in the design process, and the need to tailor dissemination activities to specific audiences (Brownson et al., 2013, p.
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contribute to food waste, various factors can influence whether an intervention aimed at reducing food waste is adopted and ultimately implemented effectively. These factors can serve as either barriers or facilitators and may occur at multiple levels, such as the intervention, the individual, the organization, and the external environment.
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As a result, they might intervene to break the habit cycle and support the development of new food use routines during "teachable moments" when new practices are being formed. For example, higher education institutions might provide storage tools, refrigerator and freezer access, and information as part of move-in kits and establish norms via visible waste reduction campaigns in university food service facilities.
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Identifying Implementation Outcomes Given that the effectiveness of implementation influences the extent to which desired outcomes (e.g., a reduction in wasted food) are realized, it is important to select implementation strategies that address barriers to and therefore promote more effective implementation.
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are likely needed to facilitate effective implementation of any specific intervention. At the same time, however, having a general capacity for change may be foundational for selecting and tailoring the implementation strategies needed to promote successful implementation of an intervention.
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CONCLUSION 6-2: Many interventions that have been studied have demonstrated significant efficacy in reducing food waste at the con sumer level in experimental settings. However, few of these promising interventions have been systematically evaluated for effectiveness in real-world and large-scale applications.
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2009. Fostering implementation of health services research findings into practice: A consolidated framework for advancing implementation science.
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2019. Choosing implementation strategies to address contextual barriers: Diversity in recommendations and future directions.
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