Nudges para a redução do desperdício de alimentos nas residências

Abstract

Food management practices are possible causes of household food waste. Hence, how people manage food management practices, such as buying and cooking, impacts how much food they waste. To influence people’s behavior, aiming for food waste reduction, nudges can be used to change people’s behavior in a variety of domains, including food waste at the household level. Nudges are interventions that have powerful and low-cost characteristics, as well as a capacity of changing people’s behavior by altering choice architecture, including private places such as households. Such interventions can be aimed at different phases of the household food management process as the prevention of overbuying and the prevention of overcooking. Insights, however, are needed on the effectiveness of nudges targeting these two different phases. Hence, the objective of this study was to test nudges aimed at two different phases of the household food management process (cooking and purchasing) while directly measuring the participant’s household food waste. Furthermore, because people tend to become more conscientious because of precisely keeping track of their food waste, the effects of measuring household food waste on participants’ household food waste over time were assessed. To check the effectiveness of the nudges, a Repeated Measures ANOVA was performed. Repeated measures ANOVA’s results showed that, although the nudges did not have any effect on participants' food waste, there was a significant difference in the participant's food waste post-intervention compared to the pre-intervention period. This difference seemed to happen because when people keep measuring their food waste over time, they tend to reduce it. This result was also found by a Linear Regression model and a Two-Level Mixed Model. Additionally, because self-reported food waste measurement methods has been questioned in the literature, comparisons between subjective self-reported food waste and objective food waste were performed. Results of cross-tabulations and a univariate ANOVA indicated that the participants could not accurately self-report their household food waste and therefore this measurement method might not be reliable for measuring household food waste.