Perceptions of Food Waste: Is there a Numerosity Bias ?

Gilles Grolleau (), Naoufel Mzoughi () and Laura Solaroli ()
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Gilles Grolleau: ESSCA - ESSCA – École supérieure des sciences commerciales d'Angers = ESSCA Business School
Naoufel Mzoughi: ECODEVELOPPEMENT - Ecodéveloppement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Laura Solaroli: ISARA, LER - Laboratoire d'Études Rurales - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ISARA

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Abstract: While individuals are expected to perceive similarly identical quantities, regardless of the used units (e.g., 1 ton or 1000 kg), several scholars suggest that consumers over-infer quantities when they are presented in bigger and phonetically-longer numbers. In two experimental studies, we examine this numerosity bias in the context of household food waste. Unlike previous scholars, manipulating numerosity revealed no effect: perceptions of food waste volume and likelihood to reduce it are not influenced by the used numeric value (2500 g vs. 2.5 kg; Study 1) nor the number of syllables (two kilos eight hundred seventy-five grams vs. three kilograms; Study 2).

Keywords: food waste; numerosity bias; survey experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env, nep-exp and nep-mac
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Published in Journal of the Economic Science Association, In press

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