Tackling Food Waste through a sharing economy approach: an experimental analysis

Morone, Piergiuseppe and Falcone, Pasquale Marcello and Imbert, Enrica and Morone, Marcello and Morone, Andrea (2016): Tackling Food Waste through a sharing economy approach: an experimental analysis.

Abstract

Food security, along with growing population and the associated environmental concerns, make food waste and loss a central topic in economic analysis. While food losses occur mostly at the production, postharvest and processing phases of the supply chain, food waste takes place mainly at the end of the chain and therefore concerns primarily the habits and behaviour patterns of retailers and consumers. Many solutions and practices have been proposed and oftentimes implemented in order to “keep food out of landfills”, thus reducing food waste at the source. However, little attention has been paid to the possible sharing of consumer-side food surplus. In this context, food sharing could represent an effective way to tackle food waste at the consumers’ level, with both environmental and economic potential positive effects. Currently, several initiatives and start-ups are being developed in the US and Europe, involving the collection and use of the excess of food from consumers and retailers and the promotion of collaborative consumption models (e.g. Foodsharing, Growington, Feastly, etc.). Nevertheless, there is still little empirical evidence testing the effectiveness of introducing sharing economy approaches to reduce food waste. This study seeks to fill this gap through a framed field experiment. We run two experimental treatments; in the control treatment students were asked to behave according to their regular food consumption habits, and in the food sharing treatment the same students were instructed to purchase food, cook and consume it collectively. Preliminary results showed that the adoption by households of food sharing practices do not automatically translate into food waste reduction. A number of factors (environmental and economic awareness, domestic skills and collaborative behaviors) might act as ‘enablers’ to make sharing practices effective.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Food waste; sharing economy; food sharing; framed field experiment
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C9 - Design of Experiments > C93 - Field Experiments; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics

References

Baker, D., Fear, J., Denniss, R., 2009. What a waste: an analysis of household expenditure on food, Canberra: The Australia Institute.

Belk, R., 2007. Why not share rather than own? Annals of the American academy of political and social science, 611, 126–140.

Braun, S., 2012. Food Waste Report on the situation and recent activities in Germany, Stuttgart University. Retrieved online at http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_foodsafety/dgs_consultations/docs/ag/summary_ahac_05102012_3_susanne_braun_en.pdf

Cox, J., Downing, P., 2007. Food Behaviour Consumer Research: Quantitative Phase. Wrap, Banbury UK. Retrieved online at http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Food%20behaviour%20consumer%20research%20quantitative%20jun%202007.pdf

European Commission (DG ENV), 2010, PREPARATORY STUDY ON FOOD WASTE ACROSS EU 27 Contract #: 07.0307/2009/540024/SER/G4, Final Report October 2010. Retrieved online at: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/pdf/bio_foodwaste_report.pdf

Evans, D., 2011. Beyond the Throwaway Society: Ordinary Domestic Practice and a Sociological Approach to Household Food Waste, Sociology 46, 41–56.

Evans, D., 2011. Blaming the consumer—once again: the social and material contexts of everyday food waste practices in some English households’.Critical Public Health 21(4), 429–440.

Evans, D., 2012. Binning, gifting and recovery: the conduits of disposal in household food consumption. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30(6) 1123 – 1137.

Gallo, A.E.,1980. Consumer Food Waste in the United States. National Food Review 3(12), 13–16.

FAO, 2014. Mitigation of food wastage. Societal costs and benefits. Retrieved online at http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3989e.pdf.

Ganglbauer , E., Fitzpatrick, G., Subasi, Ö. , Güldenpfennig, F., 2014. Think globally, act locally: a case study of a free food sharing community and social networking, Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing, February 15-19, 2014, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Griffin, M., Sobal, J., Lyson, T., 2008. An analysis of a community food waste stream, Agriculture and Human Values, 26, 67-81

Gustavsson, J., Cederberg, C., Sonesson, U., van Otterdijk, R., Meybeck, A., 2011. Global Food Losses and Food Waste: Extent Causes and Prevention, Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

Hall, K, D., Guo, J., Dore, M., Chow, C. C., 2009. The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact. PLoS ONE, 4:7940.

Halloran, A., J. Clement, N. Kornum, C. Bucatariu, and J. Magid. 2014. Addressing food waste reduction in Denmark. Food Policy 49, 294–301.

Hamilton, C Denniss, R and Baker, D, 2005. Wasteful Consumption in Australia, discussion paper 77, The Australia Institute.

HLPE. 2014. Food losses and waste in the context of sustainable food systems. A report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security, Rome 2014.

Hunt, R. C., 2000. Forager Food Sharing Economy: Transfers and Exchanges. Senri Ethnological Studies (53), 7-25.

Jaeggi, A., Gurven, M., 2013. Reciprocity explains food sharing in humans and other primates independent of kin selection and tolerated scrounging: a phylogenetic meta-analysis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280:20131615.

Jones, T., 2004. Using Contemporary Archaeology and Applied Anthropology to Understand Food Loss in the American Food System. Retrieved online at http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~gdrg/readings/2006/12/19/Jones_UsingContemporaryArchaeologyAndAppliedAnthropologyToUnderstandFoodLossInAmericanFoodSystem.pdf

Kantor, L.S.; Lipton, K.; Manchester, A.; Oliveira, V., 1997. Estimating and addressing American food loss. Food Review 20(1), 2-12.

Koivupuro, H.-K., Hartikainen, H., Silvennoinen, K., Katajajuuri, J.-M., Heikintalo, N., Reinikainen, A. and Jalkanen, L., 2012. Influence of socio-demographical, behavioural and attitudinal factors on the amount of avoidable food waste generated in Finnish households. International Journal of Consumer Studies 36,183–191.

Kummu, M., de Moel, H., Porkka, M. et al. 2012. Lost food, wasted resources: global food supply chain losses and their impacts on freshwater, cropland, and and fertiliser use, Science of The Total Environment 438, 477–489.

Langley, J.; Yoxall, A.; Heppell, G.; Rodriguez, E.M.; Bradbury, S.; Lewis, R.; Luxmoore, J.; Hodzic, A.; Rowson, J., 2010. Food for Thought? A UK pilot study testing a methodology for compositional domestic food waste analysis. Waste Manag. Res., 28, 220–227.

Monier, V., Shailendra, M., Escalon, V., O’Connor, C., Gibon, T., Anderson, G., Hortense, M., Reisinger, H., 2010. Preparatory Study on Food Waste across EU 27. European Commission (DG ENV) Directorate C-Industry. 2010. Final Report. ISBN: 978-92-79-22138-5.

Morone, P. (2016). The Times They Are A-Changing. Making the transition towards a sustainable economy, Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining (Biofpr), forthcoming.

Parfitt, J., Barthel, M., Macnaughton, S., 2010. Food waste within food supply chains: quantification and potential for change to 2050. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365(1554): 3065-3081.

Parry,A., P. Bleazard and K. Okawa (2015), "Preventing Food Waste: Case Studies of Japan and the United Kingdom", OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers, No. 76, OECD Publishing, Paris. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5js4w29cf0f7-en

Pekcan G., Köksal E., Küçükerdönmez O., Ozel H., 2006. Household food wastage in Turkey. Rome, Italy: FAO

Peterson, N., 1993. Demand Sharing: Reciprocity and the Pressure for Generosity among Foragers, American Anthropologist, New Series, 95 (4), 860-874.

Quested, T.E., Johnson, H., 2009. Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK. Report prepared by WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), Banbury.

Quested, T.E., Parry, A.D., Easteal, S. and Swannell, R., 2011. Food and drink waste from households in the UK. Nutrition Bulletin 36, 460–467.

Quested, T.E., Ingle, R., Parry, A.D. (2013), Household Food and Drink Waste in the UK 2012, WRAP, http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/hhfdw-2012-main.pdf.pdf

Sibrián, R., Komoroska J. Mernies, J., 2006. Estimating household and institutional food wastage and losses: Measuring food deprivation and food excess in the total population. Statistics Division Working Paper Series no: ESS/ESSA/001e. Rome, Italy: FAO. (also available athttp://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/documents/food_security_statistics/working_paper_series/WP00 1e.pdf)

Sobal, J., Nelson M., 2003. Food waste. In S. H. Katz (ed.), Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, Volume 1, pp. 28–29. Charles Schribner’s Sons, New York.

Ventour, L., 2008. The food we waste. Wrap. Banbury UK.

Williams, H., F. Wikström, T. Otterbring, M. Löfgren, and A. Gustafsson, 2012. Reasons for household food waste with special attention to packaging, Journal of Cleaner Production 24, 141–148.

WRAP, 2015. Strategies to achieve economic and environmental gains by reducing food waste, Banbury.

Ziker, J., Schnegg, M., 2005.Food Sharing at Meals: Kinship, Reciprocity, and Clustering in the Taimyr Autonomous Okrug, Northern Russia". Human Nature, 16(2), 178-210.