Shop More, Buy Less: A Qualitative Investigation Into Consumer Decisions That Lead To Food Waste In U.S. Households

Abstract

Estimates suggest that 40% of the food grown in the United States ends up in landfills. Household losses are the highest contributor to volume of waste overall, and individual households are estimated to discard around 15% of their total acquired food inventory. Consumers are generally waste averse and a vast majority have been shown to object to wasting food in particular, yet almost all consumers discard a substantial volume of potentially edible food each year. This exploratory qualitative study sought to uncover underlying psychological mechanisms behind this discrepancy between attitude and behavior by exploring the decision-making processes that consumers engage in as they acquire, prepare, consume and discard food. By exploring the patterns of thinking that shape household provisioning practices through an initial in-depth interview, a two-week long household food diary and a follow-up interview with 17 diverse consumers, a grounded theory emerged to explain this counter-intuitive behavior pattern. Extending research from behavioral economics and decision making literature, data from this study suggests the following: 1) people evaluate cost of goods based on incomplete value estimations that fail to account for the costs associated with discarding potentially edible foods; 2) costs associated with the act of shopping are salient and encourage less frequent provisioning trips; 3) people do not adequately account for costs associated with overbuying and storing food; and 4) consumer strategies aimed at maximize efficiency in food acquisition through less frequent shopping trips may actually result in increased inefficiency in the form of greater waste and higher overall cost of goods. Based on emergent findings, a strategy for waste avoidance is presented along with managerial implications.