Food Waste Reduction: A Test of Three Consumer Awareness Interventions

Abstract

Halving food waste by 2050 as per the Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 is key to securing a food system that is sustainable. One approach to reducing household food waste is through education campaigns. We recruited 501 households divided into three types of intervention groups and compared with a control group to better understand the efficacy of diverse education campaign approaches. Food waste interventions included a passive approach (handouts), a community engagement approach, and a gamification approach. We conducted waste audits, household surveys (pre- and post-intervention), and a focus group at the end of the campaign. The passive and gamification groups had similarly high levels of participation, while participation in the community group was very low. The passive group and the gamification group had higher self-reported awareness of food wasting after the campaign and lower food wastage than the control group. Waste audits found marginally significant differences between the game group and the control (p = 0.07) and no difference between the other campaign groups and the control group in edible food wasted. Frequent gamers were found to generate less edible food waste than infrequent gamers. We conclude that the evidence about the potential for gamification as an effective education change tool is promising and we recommend further study.

An evaluation of a consumer food waste awareness campaign using the motivation opportunity ability framework

“…This study is also the first to use a qualitative approach for understanding the impact of household food waste interventions. It builds on previous research by the authors to assess effectiveness of interventions by using quantitative methods (Soma et al, 2020).…”

The Effect of Consumer Perception on Food Waste Behavior of Urban Households in China

“…In Tehran, every consumer in household wastes about 27.6 kg of edible food annually and about 25 million tons of food go wasted or lost in Iran [24]. Because of the importance attached to this issue, an increasing number of studies on household food waste have been published in recent years [25][26][27][28][29][30].…”

Eco-Feedback for Food Waste Reduction in a Student Residence

“…Various organizations inform consumers about topics such as food purchasing, storage, preparation, or actual shelf life. In a recent study, Soma et al (2020) found evidence about the potential for gamification as an effective education based change strategy. In their study, they compared three food waste interventions, which included a passive approach (handouts), a community engagement approach, and a gamification approach.…”

“…Reducing food waste may result in a significant and noticeable difference in costs and other resources. Even though, most persuasive sustainability research focus on other topics, developments applied to food waste behavior are getting increasingly important (Soma et al, 2020). The latest developments in domestic environments can be categorized in: (1) sensor based systems (RFID tagging or camera tracking), which are used to create visibility of available foods as way for prevention, and (2) mobile applications to create visibility of wasteful behaviors for the purpose of retrospection.…”

“…In our work, we explored the use of eco-feedback embedded in a semi-public environment to raise awareness and understanding on the value of food people waste. Eco-feedback is a strategy in which peoples' activities are automatically sensed and then visualized back to users through computerized means (Froehlich et al, 2010) as a way to promote positive attitudes toward sustainability (Pierce et al, 2008;Soma et al, 2020). Current eco-feedback research mainly focuses on applications for energy, fuel or water use, while little attention has been paid to food waste (van Geffen et al, 2020).…”