Behavioral Drivers of Food Waste Reduction among Rural Households: Application of Environmental Psychology

Introduction: The economic, social, and environmental threats of food waste have become an important topic for consideration. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate the behavioral drivers of food waste reduction among rural households. The conceptual basis of this study was the theory of planned behavior (TPB), which aims to explain the relationship between intention, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control of villagers. This study extends the TPB by including new constructs such as environmental concerns, guilt, and habit into.
Material and methods: The present study was conducted through a survey. To collect data, a researcher-made questionnaire inspired by other studies was designed and validated. In order to ensure the validity of the questionnaire, the initial version was first reviewed by a team of academic experts in the field of environmental behaviors to check its content and face validity. Then, based on the experts' feedback, the constructs and items of each of them were reviewed again. By conducting a pre-test study outside of the research population, the reliability of the research tool was evaluated. For this purpose, a pilot study was conducted among 30 villagers of Piranshahr. In order to estimate the reliability of the research tool, Cronbach's alpha coefficients were calculated. Cronbach's alpha values for the latent constructs/variables were in the range of 0.70 to 0.90, which were higher than the recommended threshold value of 0.70. The target population of the study consisted of all the villagers of Naghadeh County with a wide variety of social backgrounds (N=36764). The sample size was determined using the sampling table of Krejcie and Morgan. The table’s recommended sample size was 384 cases. The sampling method of the present study was stratified random with proportional assignment. For this purpose, the county was first divided into two parts: central and Mohammadyar and finally cases were randomly selected from the village. Data were collected through a survey and analyzed using structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).
Results and discussion: The results showed that subjective norms, attitude, and perceived behavioral control significantly affected the intention to reduce food waste. Similarly, the two drivers of guilt and environmental concern also positively influenced intention. In addition, the direct effects of the two variables of intention and habit on waste reduction behavior were statistically significant.
Conclusion: Since sustained intrinsic motivation or strong intentions are required to maintain long-term behavior, therefore, it is recommended that policies and programs on the development and evaluation of behavioral interventions aimed at promoting food waste reduction behavior be broadly based on strengthening the intention of the villagers; If there are favorable conditions and incentives, people will be more willing to reduce food waste. The findings of this study have useful insights for government agencies, policy-makers, health and treatment centers, agricultural extension and education agents, and academics who are interested in developing strategies to reduce food waste.