A National Strategy to Reduce Food Waste at the Consumer Level (2020) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 19-36
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From page 19... ...
across the U.S. food supply chain, from agriculture to consumption, approximately 40 to 60 million tons of food, both edible and inedible, is wasted (EPA, 2020; ReFED, 2016)
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From page 20... ...
and increasing attention to the problem, the majority of food waste reduction initiatives to date have not been focused at the consumer level. Reasons for this may include both a lack of evidence regarding effective strategies and insufficient attention to the complexity of causes and responses within a complex food supply system.
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Drawing upon the food system overview described in A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System, the com mittee will: • Review the existing data, information, and research on consumer food waste, including assessments of effectiveness for past and current reduction efforts; • Make actionable recommendations for food waste reduction strategies; and • Identify implementation strategies to reduce wasted food at the consumer level from a holistic, systems perspective. Furthermore, many estimates rely on secondary or outdated data (Xue et al., 2017)
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. Still, empirical food waste data come primarily from sources that have not been peer reviewed or were published outside of the United States, such as the Wasted Resources Action Programme (WRAP)
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. Researchers have used modeling to estimate that halving food waste across all stages of the food supply chain could reduce the total environmental impact of the U.S.
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In addition to the peer-reviewed literature, the committee reviewed grey literature on efforts of various groups to reduce food waste at the consumer level, including interventions, guidelines, and various other relevant topics. The committee also sought insights in domains identified as similar to that of food waste for the purpose of studying consumer behavior and ways to influence it.
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Thus the committee investigated not only drivers of consumer behavior (see the discussion of terminology below) and interventions that directly affect individuals, but also other factors, such as policy, the actions of the food industry (i.e., food service venues and food retailers)
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The consequences in other domains may be positive or negative, intended or unintended, and they can be disproportionally larger than those intended for the intervention. The committee found limited research salient for exploring this issue with respect to food waste, but wherever possible, we considered potential consequences of interventions to reduce food waste in other areas, such as the possible effects of a technology used for this purpose on food safety.
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Integrating Work from the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Researchers in fields including food science, nutrition, public health, behavioral economics, marketing, sociology, social psychology, land use planning, geography, and implementation science have in one way or another contributed to understanding of why consumers do what they do and how consumer behaviors can be shaped through interventions. While each of these fields has made important contributions, they identify and investigate questions in different ways that reflect the conceptual underpinnings of their disciplines.
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The definition of food waste itself is another challenge. As noted earlier, researchers who study food waste define it in varying ways (e.g., sometimes including spoiled or otherwise inedible food and sometimes not)
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The committee's review of the six behavioral domains identified as similar to that of food waste demonstrated that multiple theories have been dominant in studies of behavioral change, ranging from the psychological (the theory of planned behavior and modified versions [Ajzen, 1991]
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Early theo ries of behavior change, such as social cognitive theory, the theory of planned behavior, and the transtheoretical model, were influential efforts to explain why people adopt a behavior. This set of theories characterized human behavior as being predominantly conscious and reason driven, and this category of behavior is sometimes referred to as "System 2" processing (Koop et al., 2019; Marteau, 2017; Varotto and Spagnolli, 2017)
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However, even if environmental beliefs and norms are drivers for some consumers in some cases, this approach addresses only the individual decision maker, not the many other elements of the food waste system. Widely used in qualitative research, theories of practice (also known as social practice theory or practice theory)
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Like theories of practice, the MOA framework supports analysis of behavior that may be driven by habit rather than explicit intention. Indeed, the MOA framework also makes clear that when motivation, opportunity, or ability is low, consumers are likely to be influenced by factors related to routine, choice context, nonconscious factors, or social norms, and that addressing individual, group, and societal cues will increase the chance of sustained behavioral change.
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It identifies implications for the design of interventions targeting food waste behaviors. Chapter 4 reviews the research on interventions to reduce food waste, again taking into account lessons from other disciplines.
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2011. Systematic review of maintenance of behavior change following physical activity and dietary interventions.
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2020. Assessing the environmental impacts of halving food loss and waste along the food supply chain.
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From page 36... ...
Gilliland. "Reduce food waste, save money": Test ing a novel intervention to reduce household food waste.
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