Food waste in the sharing economy

Timothy J. Richards and Stephen Hamilton

Food Policy, 2018, vol. 75, issue C, 109-123

Abstract: Wasting food is one of the rare problems that affects our ability to achieve economic goals in terms of food security, environmental sustainability, and farm-financial security. Most of the ideas proposed to this point involve either behavioral nudges or administrative regulations that are either too paternalistic or piecemeal to represent viable solutions. In this study, we investigate the potential for commercial peer-to-peer mutualization systems (CPMSs), or sharing-economy firms, to emerge as market platforms for the exchange of surplus food. If a system of CPMSs is able to develop in a self-sustaining way, then the market prices they create will generate sufficient incentives for all actors to manage surplus food more efficiently. We develop an empirical model of a CPMS operating as a platform in a two-sided market, and examine its viability using data from one of the first CPMS firms in the surplus-harvest industry, Imperfect Produce, Inc. Empirical estimates of a two-sided network-demand model show that user-demand rises in the number of growers shipping to the platform, and grower demand for distribution rises in the number of users. Our findings indicate that secondary markets have the key elements needed for CPMS success, and that policy tools designed to facilitate transactions in secondary markets can be highly effective in reducing food waste.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030691921730790X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:75:y:2018:i:c:p:109-123

DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2018.01.008

Access Statistics for this article

Food Policy is currently edited by J. Kydd

More articles in Food Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().