AN EXPERIMENTAL AUCTION APPROACH TO REDUCING FOOD WASTE: CONSUMER WILLINGNESS TO PAY, PERCEIVED CONTROL, AND PERCEIVED RESPONSIBILITY

Food waste contributes significantly to climate and environmental degradation. According to recent estimates, food loss and waste account for 8–10% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. A number of studies have investigated individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) in relation to voluntary certification schemes pertaining to various ethical attributes, including locally grown, fair trade, organic, and so forth. The impact of a voluntary certification scheme about reducing food waste–and the higher price people might be willing to pay for it—have not been thoroughly studied. In order to determine whether participants in the current study (N = 80) would be willing to pay more for bread certified against food waste than for non-certified bread, a non-hypothetical auction was conducted. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of the individual sense of control, which can be defined as either perceived behavioral control or perceived responsibility. Results show that participants are willing to pay more for bread that has been certified to reduce food waste. In addition, perceived behavioral control has a significant positive impact on the premium price for the certified product, whereas perceived responsibility has no effect on it. Results are robust to participants’ gender and income. Practical implications related to control-based and responsibility-based communication strategies for reducing food waste are discussed.