Examining Household Food Waste Decisions: A Vignette Approach

Although food waste is increasingly recognized as an environmental and food security problem, there remains uncertainty over its primary contributors. Some food waste analyses seem to treat household food waste as a “mistake” or careless decision; however, consumer decisions to waste also likely reflect trade-offs and economic incentives. These issues were explored in large surveys of U.S. food consumers using both within-and between-subject designs, 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 contextual factors.