Food Waste Reduction from Customers’ Plates: Applying the Norm Activation Model in South Korean Context

Wansoo Kim, Chen Che and Chul Jeong
Additional contact information
Wansoo Kim: Department of Tourism Management, Gachon University, Seongnam 13120, Korea
Chen Che: College of History and Tourism Culture, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010021, China
Chul Jeong: Division of Tourism Science, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Researchers have pointed out the urgent need to tackle food waste from customers’ plates, considering its environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Nonetheless, little is known about reducing food waste from customers’ plates in the restaurant context. The present research successfully addressed how customers can reduce food waste by using the Norm Activation Model (NAM). A customer survey was employed to collect quantitative data to verify the hypotheses of this study. The NAM of this study involved awareness of environmental impact (of the restaurant industry), ascribed responsibility for food waste, and moral norm for food waste reduction as predictors for food waste reduction intention. In addition, this study adopted self-efficacy to food waste reduction as a moderator on the path from the moral norm for food waste reduction to food waste reduction intention. Our empirical results supported all the hypotheses suggested in the research model. Consequently, the findings of this study adequately explained how restaurant customers form their intention to reduce food waste and thus provided important clues about how it can be encouraged. For example, based on the findings, a nudging message may be displayed on the restaurant wall to raise customers’ self-efficacy, saying, “Saving the earth is as easy as finishing your food or taking it home”.

Keywords: food waste; norm activation model; self-efficacy; restaurant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/1/109/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/1/109/ (text/html)

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:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:1:p:109-:d:721083

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().