The effect of food waste habit on future intention to reduce household food waste

In the framework of ethical consumerism, the interest for food waste and food waste prevention is steadily growing. A significant portion of food waste is created at the household level, therefore consumer behavior and its psychological antecedents are very important in relation to this timely issue. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen 1991), the current study investigated whether the intention to reduce household food waste could be predicted by attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Moreover, research aims to investigate the effect of food waste habits on intentions to reduce food waste. Do habits influence the future intention to reduce food waste? If this is the case, is this effect direct, or rather mediated by attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control, as the TPB would predict? Finally, we were interested to test the effects of a set of key concerns emerged in a recent study (La Barbera et al., 2016) on the food waste habit. Results show that the TPB constructs adequately predict participants’ future intention to reduce food waste. In line with the TPB, food waste habit indirectly affects future intention through the mediation of attitude and perceived behavioral control. Finally, we found that the concern related to the negative environmental consequences of food waste is the only one which significantly affects food waste habit. Limitation, practical implication, and future developments of the study are discussed.