Understanding food waste behaviours along the food supply chain-a mutilevel approach
- Autores: Raquel Díaz Ruiz
- Directores de la Tesis: José María Gil Roig (dir. tes.), Montserrat Costa Font (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2018
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Luiza Toma (presid.), Vicenc Fernández Alarcón (secret.), Matteo Vittuari (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Sostenibilidad por la Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The visibility of the food waste volume along the food supply chain during the recent years has situated this topic in the policy and research agenda. Food waste entails environmental, ethical and economic impacts. There is a vast agreement on the urgency of reducing the current food waste generation. However, there is still several gaps of knowledge to better achieve it. The complexity of the food waste phenomenon requires in-depth analyses, including multiple dimensions and adopting a multi-actor approach, to better understand its causes and to adopt the most adequate of solutions. There is a lack of whole-supply approaches and multidimensional consumers’ understanding. To fill these gaps, the main objective of this thesis is to explain the factors influencing the food waste generation, as well as to explore potential measures to prevent and reduce the current food waste generation at different stages of the supply chain. To achieve this objective, this thesis is structured in two main parts. The first one considers the whole food supply chain while the second focusses at the household level. The specific objectives of the thesis are: 1) to analyse the causes of food waste generation and the circumstantial or structural nature along the food supply chain; 2) to identify and prioritize food waste prevention and reduction measures along the food supply chain; 3) to better understand consumer food waste behaviour by considering a multidimensional model; and 4) to critically analyse in-home consumer food waste measurement and the effect of framing and information on consumers’ perception of food waste generation.
To achieve these objectives, the thesis employs both quantitative and qualitative methods. The two main parts of the thesis are divided in four chapters. The first part of the thesis (chapter 1 and 2) used a multi-stakeholder panel along the food supply chain to analyse the causes and solutions to food waste in the metropolitan region of Barcelona. In-depth interviews and a Delphi survey were employed. The second part (chapter 3 and 4) includes two consumer surveys, one in the Barcelona metropolitan region, and the other in the United States. The first survey tested and validated a multidimensional behavioural model to explain consumers’ food waste behaviour by means of the Partial Least Square - Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The second survey employ a survey experiment methodology.
This thesis addresses the food waste debate from an innovative and holistic perspective. Chapters 1 and 2 provide meaningful evidences to understand the structural nature of food waste generation, as well as to find out solutions to prevent and reduce it by addressing the complex root of the phenomenon. Chapter 2 discusses the regional stakeholder’s proposals to prevent and reduce food waste by prioritizing them - following the hierarchy of food waste management- into strong prevention, weak prevention, and redistribution solutions. Chapter 3 and 4 offer innovative approaches to understand, and accordingly address, consumers’ food waste. Chapter 3 proposes and validates a model that predicts food waste by means of consumers’ food-related behaviours, waste-related behaviour, environmental concern, and materialism values. Chapter 4 demonstrates the influence of different framings (volume, monetary, social, and environmental) in consumer’s self-reporting of food waste, as well as the effect of information on their perception. Chapter 3 and 4 test different alternatives to measure consumer food waste generation. Overall, the thesis contributes to the growing body of literature by offering multidimensional approaches to analyse the food waste phenomenon, and it does so by offering first-hand data from each case study – which is very scarce nowadays. Finally, the findings are of greater interest to both policy bodies and researchers in the field of sustainable food system.
