Adapting, refining and expanding a validated questionnaire to measure food waste in U.S. households

Abstract

The Household Food Waste Questionnaire (van Herpen et al. 2019a) was developed and validated as an effective instrument to identify statistically significant differences between households and to distinguish trends in household food waste over time. The original instrument was validated using consumers sampled from several European countries. We conduct a pilot study with U.S. consumers using the revised questionnaire. We find that a sample of 150 online panelists provided sufficient statistical power to replicate standard findings from the literature that smaller households and older respondents generate less food waste, but not enough statistical power to identify a statistically significant week-to-week reduction in reported food waste among households who received a food waste message rather than a control message. Power analysis conducted via bootstrapping with the pilot data suggests a usable sample size of 180 per group is required. In our study, we adapted the questionnaire for use with consumers in the United States by: Adjusting food category descriptions and converting food quantity benchmarks to units and amounts more familiar to U.S. consumers. Refining several elements to the questionnaire, including the addition of a visual guide to help respondents better estimate food quantities. Expanding the approach by adding a second follow up questionnaire that permits assessment of within household changes over consecutive weeks.

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

“…Before the February 2021 wave 1 data collection, a pilot study was launched in Fall 2020 to validate the approach and assess its precision (Shu et al, 2021). The approach begins with participants completing an initial survey that ends with an announcement that a follow‐up survey will arrive in about 1 week, and that for the next 7 days, participants should pay close attention to the amounts of different foods their household throws away, feeds to animals or composts because the food is past date, spoiled or no longer wanted for other reasons.…”

“…With this in mind, we commenced collection of household food waste data via self-administered surveys in early 2021 from samples of consumers drawn from throughout the United States. The survey builds upon a validated online survey ( van Herpen, van Geffen, et al, 2019) as adapted and validated for US audiences (Shu et al, 2021) in which respondents are first directed to monitor discarded food over the next 7 days and then administered a survey a week later where respondents report waste from the previous week in 24 distinct categories. While self-reports of food waste yield estimated levels that are substantially (~40%) less than direct physical measurement of household food waste streams (Hoover & Moreno, 2017;van Herpen, van der Lans, et al, 2019;WRAP, 2020), this approach is effective at tracking changes in waste and identifying differences between subgroups of households with well-known variations in food waste levels (van Herpen, van der Lans, et al, 2019;Shu et al, 2023Shu et al, , 2021WRAP 2020).…”

A Systematic Review of Pre-Post Studies Testing Behaviour Change Interventions to Reduce Consumer Food Waste in the Household

“…The reviewed study by Everitt, van der Werf, Seabrook, and Gilliland in 2023 [24] was a continuation of an earlier study by van der Werf, Seabrook, and Gilliland in 2021 [48], adding a longitudinal element. The remaining 14 reviewed articles were unique studies, though it was common for authors to be involved in writing multiple papers on the topic in subsequent years (e.g., [53,60]). This underscores their prolific contribution to the literature, and enriches the discourse on food waste behaviour change through consistent terminology, collaboration, and deepening insights [61].…”

Five ways to waste food: food wasting behaviours questionnaire

“…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 (Shu et al, 2021). The perspective of the individual person might be even more important in the future.…”

“…There are two categories of self-report questionnaires for assessing consumer food waste: questionnaires directly aimed at measuring the amount of wasted food (e.g. van Herpen et al, 2019a), which often use visual aids to help people imagine the amounts of wasted food (Martindale, 2014;Shu et al, 2021) and questionnaires assessing the frequency of behaviours that lead to food waste (e.g. Babbitt et al, 2021;Misiak et al, 2020).…”