A take-home message: workplace food waste interventions influence household pro-environmental behaviors

Feiyang Wang, Ganga Shreedhar, Matteo Galizzi and Susana Mourato

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Previous research on food waste interventions has mostly focused on micro-level factors related to the individuals, and largely neglected macro-level contextual factors such as work-to-home spillovers. Inspired by the multi-level framework, we present a case study of how macro-level workplace campaigns could decrease food waste in staff cafeterias, compete with micro-level factors like environmental identity, and further stimulate some employees’ food saving efforts at home. The workplace interventions combined smart bins with fortnightly informational feedback trialed in three staff cafeterias of a large hotel chain in Macau, China. Actual food waste data and self-reported behavior consistently show that the staff cafeteria receiving environmental framing with anthropomorphic cues had more reductions in food waste behaviors. A key determinant of self-reported food saving efforts at home was efforts to reduce food waste at work, which predicted beyond and above environmental identity and provided evidence for positive contextual spillover effects.

Keywords: food waste; behavioral intervention; multi-level framework; environmental framing; anthropomorphism; contextual spillover (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2022-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cna, nep-env and nep-res
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Resources, Conservation & Recycling Advances, 1, November, 2022, 15. ISSN: 2667-3789

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:115762

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