A validated survey to measure household food waste

Herpen, Erica van; Geffen, Lisanne van; Vries, Mariska Nijenhuis-de; Holthuysen, Nancy; Lans, I.A. van der; Quested, Tom

doi:10.1016/j.mex.2019.10.029

Cited by 62 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…questionnaires directly aimed at measuring the amount of wasted food (e.g., van Herpen, van Geffen, et al, 2019), and questionnaires assessing the frequency of behaviours that lead to food waste (e.g., Misiak et al, 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first category, although much less complicated and less expensive than direct observations, may result in biased estimates of the amount of wasted food due to underreporting caused by social desirability bias along with difficulty in recollecting the memories of the amount of wasted food (Jörissen et al, 2015). To improve the quality of direct self-reports, researchers have to pre-announce the survey several days before the actual study and specify detailed product categories to facilitate the recall (van Herpen, van Geffen, et al, 2019). Also, these types of measures assess the consumer food waste on a household level-these are not suitable to assess the amount of food waste produced by a single person, which limits the possibility of testing the hypotheses regarding individual factors (e.g., psychological), that may affect food wasting behaviours.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Food Wasting Behaviours Questionnaire. A Test of a New Method and a Natural Experiment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Misiak¹,

Sobol-Kwapińska²,

Kowal³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Measuring food wasting behaviour at the consumer level is challenging. Most existing methods focus on food wasting at the household level, which in turn limits the possibility to study the situational and individual factors shaping food wasting behaviour in a single person. To fill this gap, we conducted a series of pre-registered studies in which we developed the Food Wasting Behaviours Questionnaire (FWBQ), an inexpensive method suitable for assessing and monitoring food wasting behaviour at the single-person level. We found that a wide range of behaviours associated with food wasting could be narrowed down to five distinctive basic categories: (1) discarding food because of its’ unpalatability; (2) preventing food waste through buying only the necessities; (3) preventing food waste through planning meals and groceries; (4) preventing food waste through sharing food with others; and (5) preventing food waste through feeding animals. The FWBQ allowed us to investigate the socio-economic factors that influence food wasting behaviour, such as food insecurity. Furthermore, because we started our research programme before the pandemic, we were able to conduct a natural experiment and observe that people changed their food wasting behaviour during the pandemic. Finally, we found that FWBQ allowed for predicting the amount of wasted meat, dairy and bakery products. In summary, we have demonstrated the potential utility of the FWBQ, an inexpensive and easy-to-use method for predicting the factors and antecedents of food wasting behaviour.

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confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Food Wasting Behaviours Questionnaire. A Test of a New Method and a Natural Experiment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Misiak¹,

Sobol-Kwapińska²,

Kowal³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Understanding Why Consumers Do Not Eat the Food They Acquire | 29 Moreover, each measurement method to measure the amount of food wasted has its own peculiarities (Table 2.1). Weighing and garbage collection provide the most objective and accurate information on food waste (Van Herpen et al 2019b;Xue et al 2017), but these methods are time-consuming and expensive, and are impractical to apply to a large sample of households (Van Herpen et al 2019b). Other types of measurement methods, such as keeping kitchen diaries and records, are less time-consuming and expensive but depend largely on personal perceptions and the observer's subjectivity, which may reduce the accuracy of the data.…”

Section: Investigating and Measuring Consumer Food Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other types of measurement methods, such as keeping kitchen diaries and records, are less time-consuming and expensive but depend largely on personal perceptions and the observer's subjectivity, which may reduce the accuracy of the data. Survey measures can be subject to social desirability (Van Herpen et al 2019b), and directly asking consumers about their waste behavior may make them more conscious of their behavior (Parizeau, von Massow, and Martin 2015), possibly leading to underreporting of the amount of food wasted (Neff, Spiker, and Truant 2015;Van der Werf et al 2019). Questionnaires are useful when the aim is to investigate consumer attitudes and effects of household-specific characteristics or to investigate differences between households and within households across time rather than attempting to accurately estimate the amount of food waste (Van Herpen et al 2019b;Yu and Jaenicke 2020).…”

Section: Investigating and Measuring Consumer Food Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Survey measures can be subject to social desirability (Van Herpen et al 2019b), and directly asking consumers about their waste behavior may make them more conscious of their behavior (Parizeau, von Massow, and Martin 2015), possibly leading to underreporting of the amount of food wasted (Neff, Spiker, and Truant 2015;Van der Werf et al 2019). Questionnaires are useful when the aim is to investigate consumer attitudes and effects of household-specific characteristics or to investigate differences between households and within households across time rather than attempting to accurately estimate the amount of food waste (Van Herpen et al 2019b;Yu and Jaenicke 2020). Hence, when the aim is to obtain accurate waste amounts, expending extra resources and applying actual garbage collection and weighing to measure food waste may therefore be most constructive.…”

Section: Investigating and Measuring Consumer Food Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

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Consumer Food Waste: Understanding Why Consumers Do Not Eat the Food They Acquire

Luiting-Drijfhout¹

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This quote from the food waste documentary Just Eat illustrates the seeming indifference consumers have toward wasting food. Every year, an estimated 1.3 billion tons of food produced for human consumption-about 33% of all food by weight-is lost or wasted within the supply chain (Gustavsson, Cederberg, and Sonesson 2011). As a consequence, food waste is associated with multiple negative environmental, economic, and social outcomes. Magnitude of the Food Waste Problem Environmental ImpactAs the production of food is resource-intensive, food losses and waste are accompanied by high environmental costs. For example, food waste results in a significant loss of valuable resources such as water, soil, and energy used during the production, processing, marketing, transporting, and refrigeration of the food (Parfitt, Barthel, and Macnaughton 2010; Thyberg and Tonjes 2016). Moreover, food waste is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were to be considered a country, its carbon footprint would rank as the third top global carbon-emitting country after the U.S. and China (Beretta et al. 2013;FAO 2013). Economic ImpactFood waste also represents tremendous economic losses. At the European level, along the entire supply chain around 88 million tons of food waste are generated annually, causing a monetary loss of €143 billion (Stenmarck et al. 2016). From a consumer perspective, the financial losses caused by wasting food are about 10% of a consumer's food spending (Buzby, Wells, and Hyman 2014), or approximately €300 to €400 per year for an average four-person household (Buzby et al. 2014;Quested and Johnson 2009). Consumer Food Waste: Understanding why Consumers Waste so Much Food | 13 Societal ImpactAt the societal level, food waste leads to food safety concerns, an increase in food prices, and a reduction in consumer well-being (Van Doorn 2016). According to FAO et al. (2019), the total amount of food waste generated every year could feed more than four times the 800+ million people-11% of the global population-who currently suffer from hunger. Food insecurity is even an issue in developed countries. For example, approximately 12 to 15% of U.S. households face food insecurity (Coleman-Jensen, Gregory, and Singh 2013; USDA ERS 2017), and the number of European households that need support from food banks is steadily increasing (Tyler 2019;Voedselbanken Nederland 2018). Given the malnutrition in both developing and developed countries and taking into account the world's increasing population

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Household food waste trending upwards in the United States: Insights from a National Tracking Survey

Shu

Bender

et al. 2023

J of Agr & App Econ Assoc

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Three successive administrations have supported the United States' 2015 goal to reduce food waste. Households waste more food than other supply chain segments, however, few data sources are available to track US households' progress toward this goal. We provide insights from the first four waves of a novel national survey designed to track such waste. We find a 280% year‐over‐year increase in self‐reported waste between early 2021 and early 2022, which militates against national goal achievement. We find households wasted more food during weeks they dined out and that sample households dined out significantly more in 2022 than in 2021.

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A validated survey to measure household food waste

Abstract: Graphical abstract

Cited by 62 publications

References 13 publications

Food Wasting Behaviours Questionnaire. A Test of a New Method and a Natural Experiment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Food Wasting Behaviours Questionnaire. A Test of a New Method and a Natural Experiment During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Consumer Food Waste: Understanding Why Consumers Do Not Eat the Food They Acquire

Household food waste trending upwards in the United States: Insights from a National Tracking Survey

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