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Consumer and Food Waste

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Submitted By kjesani
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Consumers and food waste – a review of research approaches and findings on point of purchase and in-household consumer behaviour
Aschemann-Witzel, Jessica1; de Hooge, Ilona2; Amani, Pegah3; Bech-Larsen, Tino1; Jenny,
Gustavsson3

1

MAPP - Centre for Research on Customer Relations in the Food Sector, Aarhus University,
Bartholins Allé 10, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
2
Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen, Then Netherlands.
3
SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden - Food and Bioscience, Box 5401, SE-402 29,
Göteborg, Sweden.

Paper prepared for presentation at the EAAE-AAEA Joint Seminar
‘Consumer Behavior in a Changing World: Food, Culture, Society”
March 25 to 27, 2015
Naples, Italy

Consumers and food waste – a review of research approaches and findings on point of purchase and in-household consumer behaviour

Introduction
Around a third of the world´s food is wasted at various steps of the supply chain (FAO, 2011).
In Europe, the largest and increasing share is wasted at the consumer level (EPRS, 2014). The issue has gained considerable public attention in the past years, with a large number of initiatives developed by different stakeholders such as policy makers, retailers (e.g. France,
Intermarché, 2014) and NGOs (e.g. Denmark, Stop spild af mad, 2014), and research projects that have and are exploring the issue (CONANX; FUSIONS). Furthermore, the European
Parliament has called for 2014 to be the ‘year against food waste’ (EP, 2014). It is known that consumers avoid deformed food (Loebnitz & Grunert, 2014) and foods close to the best before date (Tsiros, 2005) in the choice situation, while consumer food safety concerns
(Watson & Meah, 2013), storage facilities (Terpstra et al., 2005), family practices around meals and leftovers (Cappellini & Parsons, 2012) and planning capabilities (Stefan et al.,
2013)

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