Examining Household Food Waste Decisions: A Vignette Approach

Brenna Ellison and Jayson Lusk

No 235609, 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Although food waste is increasingly recognized as an environmental and food security problem, there remains uncertainty over its primary contributors. Analyses of food waste often fail to treat the problem as an economic phenomenon, where consumers’ utility maximizing decisions result in discarded food. This paper presents a conceptual model of household food waste, showing that decisions to discard food depend on food prices and wage and non-wage income. The results of two empirical studies are presented, where we study consumers’ decisions to discard food in different scenarios that vary safety, price, and opportunity costs. We find that food waste is a function of consumers’ demographic characteristics, and that decisions to discard food vary with economic incentives.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Institutional and Behavioral Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Journal Article: Examining Household Food Waste Decisions: A Vignette Approach (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea16:235609

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.235609

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