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. 2019 Sep 20;8(10):428.
doi: 10.3390/foods8100428.

How Consumer Behavior in Daily Food Provisioning Affects Food Waste at Household Level in The Netherlands

Kim Janssens  1 , Wim Lambrechts  2 , Annet van Osch  3 , Janjaap Semeijn  4
Affiliations

How Consumer Behavior in Daily Food Provisioning Affects Food Waste at Household Level in The Netherlands

Kim Janssens et al. Foods. .

Abstract

Food production and consumption have remarkable negative environmental effects, in particular food waste. Food waste occurs throughout the entire food system, but households make the largest contribution. Reducing unnecessary waste of food represents a crucial step toward overcoming global issues of food waste, hunger, and climate change. Identifying barriers in reducing food waste is important not only to government and policymakers, but also to food producers, retailers, and marketers. Therefore, the objective of this research was to find out how consumer behavior in daily food provisioning affects food waste. An online survey was set up to question Dutch consumers (partly) in charge of the household's food management. A total of 211 consumers participated in answering questions on household composition, food management behavior (e.g., food purchase planning) and food waste awareness (i.e., concern about wasting food and intention not to waste food). Results show that purchase behavior in-store was the main driver of food waste. Specifically, participants indicated that buying more food than needed often had led to food waste. In addition, intention not to waste food acted as a moderator in the relationship between planning behavior and food waste. Age appears to have a diminishing impact on wasting food.

Keywords: consumer behavior; food waste; food waste behavior; grocery retail; household food waste prevention; sustainable grocery management.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Conceptual model of Dutch households’ reported food waste.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Structural model with path coefficients and levels of significance.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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