Widening the scope of responsible innovation: food waste and the role of consumers

ABSTRACT

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) scholars often emphasise the distributed nature of innovation, but RRI generally targets researchers or innovators (or their organisations). Can we, within an RRI approach, expect consumers to be more active innovation agents and to be held more responsible for driving innovation in the right direction? To explore this question, we studied the societal challenge of food waste. We designed a study consisting of three world cafés to explore consumer perceptions of their own responsibility to engage with the food value chain to innovate to reduce food waste and complemented this with questionnaires. We found that the consumers in this study conceptualise their responsibilities in a passive way, not using current possibilities for communication with food companies. More open and interactive industry-led engagement processes are needed. This requires building competence and capacity to increase such engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• RRI
• food waste
• citizens
• consumers
• world café

Acknowledgements

We thank the participants in the world cafés, and our fellow project members and the project’s critical friends for discussions of the study. We also thank the reviewers for helpful feedback on an earlier draft of the document. Finally, the main author would like to thank Drakamöllan Nordiskt Forum for the kind possibility to finalise the manuscript in such inspiring surroundings.

Disclosure statement

NORSUS has collaborated with Matvett since it was established in 2012, mainly by delivering research as a basis for measuring food waste and developing targeted interventions to reduce food waste. NORSUS has also conducted commissioned research for and with companies in the food value chain. There are no bindings (financially or other) between NORSUS and these companies and NORSUS has research ethics guidelines that clearly outlines the Institute’s integrity vis-à-vis clients. The authors have no competing interests regarding the research and findings reported in this article.

Notes

1 Although this is a common conclusion from the food waste statistics, we acknowledge that current methodologies tend to leave or underestimate food loss and waste from the primary production, processing, and food service sectors (see: Feedback EU 2022). There are several reasons for the large generation of food waste from consumers originating in the previous links in the chain (for instance that major parts of a product’s shelf life are used in previous stages of the chain or that packages are too big), but consumer knowledge, attitudes, values, and behaviours also play a major role (Principato 2018).

2 This research was conducted as part of the BREAD project (Building Responsibility and Developing Innovative Strategies for Tackling Food Waste).

3 A motivation for this approach is perhaps found in the fact that RRI originates from research and innovation funders needing to legitimise investments in research and innovation to taxpayers and politicians (Forsberg and Wittrock 2022).

4 The required approval of NSD (now SIKT) for treatment of personal data was secured, approval number 320363.

5 https://www.dedoose.com/.

6 Note that this figure is based on Norwegian students only, as the Italians used ranges instead of natural numbers. The figure 54 % is correct only for the Norwegian situation, but for all European countries, households contribute to a large share of the total food waste.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted as part of the BREAD project (Building Responsibility and Developing Innovative Strategies for Tackling Food Waste), funded by the Research Council of Norway through the SAMANSVAR programme under grant number 299337.

Notes on contributors

Ellen-Marie Forsberg

Ellen-Marie Forsberg is Managing Director of NORSUS Norwegian Institute for Sustainability Research and has a minor research component at the institute. She has a doctorate in applied ethics from the University of Oslo in 2007. She coordinated the European Commission Horizon 2020 project Responsible Research and Innovation in Practice (RRI-Practice; see www.rri-practice.eu) and has led several other Norwegian and international projects in the area. Her research has mostly focused on ethics and governance of emerging technologies, responsible research and innovation, agricultural and food ethics, and research ethics.

Matteo Corciolani

Matteo Corciolani has a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Pisa and is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and Management. He teaches Marketing and Marketing Communications and his research interests relate to Consumer Behaviour, Marketing Management, and Corporate Social Responsibility. His research projects focus on several topics, such as the production and consumption of authentic items, CSR communications, and food consumption.

Julia Szulecka

Julia Szulecka is an environmental social scientist, whose research interests focus on the sustainability issues in the food, forestry and water sectors, as well as governance and policy pathways towards a functioning bioeconomy. She has recently worked on organic waste policy and on food waste reduction governance, heading the BREAD project at the TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo and NORSUS Norwegian Institute for Sustainability Research. She currently works as a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA).

Nhat Strøm-Andersen

Nhat Strøm-Andersen is currently a research scientist at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO). She obtained her doctoral degree from the University of Oslo in 2020, where she also conducted her postdoctoral research. Her research interests are related to sustainable food production and consumption through the lens of innovation studies, management studies, governance, stakeholder theory, and sustainability transitions. Food waste is one of the main topics she has studied in the last few years.