T h e e f f e c t i v e n e s s o f a s t o r a g e m a n a g e m e n t
i n t e r v e n t i o n i n r e d u c i n g f o o d w a s t e a n d t h e m o d e r a t i n g
r o l e s o f h e d o n i c v a l u e s a n d f r u g a l i t y
THE EFFECT OF AN INTERVENTION
ON THE AMOUNT OF FOOD WASTE
B y
M a r l o e s K e u n i n g
S2580047 University of Groningen Master Thesis, January 2017 1st Supervisor: dr. J. (Jenny) van Doorn
CONTENT
•
What & why?
•
Introduction
•
Conceptual model
•
Hypotheses
•
How?
•
Methodology
•
Results?
•
Sample characteristics
•
Results
•
Conclusions
INTRODUCTION
• The problem of food waste:
• One third of all food never consumed (Gustavsson et al. 2011)
• 14% of purchased food disposed uneaten (Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2014)
• Consumer to a large part responsible (Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2014)
• Wrongful food storage most common reason (E.g. Koivupuro et al. 2012; Wansink, 2001; WRAP, 2007)
• More focus on changing behaviour
• Theory suggests:
• Interventions useful tool for (sustainable) behavioural change (Abrahamse et al., 2006)
• Consumer values and personality traits influence behaviour and affect change (e.g.Zeithaml, 1988)
INTRODUCTION (2)
• Research questions:
• To what extent is a storage management intervention effective in changing consumer behaviour and reducing food waste?
• To what degree are hedonic values affecting the effectiveness of the storage management intervention?
• To what degree is the level of frugality affecting the effectiveness of the storage management intervention?
• Research gap:
• Investigating intervention effectiveness on food waste behaviour
CONCEPTUAL MODEL
H1
H3
H2
Storage management
intervention
Amount of household
food waste
Consumer values and traits:
Hedonic values
HYPOTHESES
• H1
A storage management intervention will reduce consumers’ food waste
• Urgent action necessary in form of education to store food correclty (Porpino, et al. 2015)
• Better food store management lead to reduction in food waste (Achsemann-Witzel et al, 2015)
•
H2 Strong hedonic values reduce the effectiveness of a storage management
intervention to reduce consumers’ food waste
• Hedonic values impede behavioural change in interventions (Steg, et al., 2014)
• Aim of intervention not in line with values of hedonism (Bolderdijk et al., 2013)
•
H3
A high level of frugality will increase the effectiveness of the storage
management intervention to reduce food waste
.• Frugality not directly linked to intervention effectiveness
• Motivation to avoid food waste influences behaviour (Aschemann-Witzel et al, 2015).
METHODOLOGY: FIELD EXPERIMENT
• Research design
• At home field experiment
• Quantitative research
• Data collection
• Food waste diary (Koivupuro, 2012)
• Questionnaire:
• Hedonic values (Schwartz, 1992)
• Frugality (Lastovicka, 1999)
• Socio-demographics (e.g. Evans, 2011)
• Analytical method
• H1: one-way ANOVA
• H2 & H3: multiple regression analyses
• Transformation of data Condition: No intervention Control group Condition: Intervention Control group vs.
SAMPLE CHARACTERISTICS
• Sample
• 55 participants (37 valid)
• Mostly females
• Average age 57 years
• Highly educated
• High income
• Working hours: 16
• Household size: 2,44
• Variables
• Average hedonic values: 7,92
• Average frugality: 3,40
• Average food waste: 628 gr & 234 ml
DISCUSSION (1)
• The three hypotheses are not supported:
• Storage management had no statistical effect on food waste (gr)
•
Despite the mean differences between conditions
• A high level of frugality did not increase the effectiveness of the intervention
DISCUSSION (2)
• Hedonic values did not reduce (or change) the effectiveness of the intervention
• Hedonic values had a nonlinear u-shaped effect on food waste in grams (ln)
• Older people tend to waste less food than younger people
• Bigger households tend to dispose more food than smaller households
IMPLICATIONS
• This study extends the literature
• Drivers for change
• New insights and confirmation of prior findings (Koivupuro et al., 2012; Cox and Downing, 2007; Evans, 2011).
• Additional research necessary, before jumping to conclusions
• Firms & institutions:
• Use results and evaluations in understanding how interventions work.
• Focus on younger people and bigger households in creating and implementing food waste interventions
• Evaluate and use intervention guidelines in implementing interventions
• Ideas:
• Short online survey and approximation of food waste à type of intervention
LIMITATIONS & FUTURE RESEARCH
• Representativeness of the sample
• Future research: Larger & more representative sample
• Set-up of experiment
• Future research: Extending observation time & follow up study
• Data: reliability & not generalizable
• Measure for data collection: diary method
• Future research: more controlled experiment
