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

Introduction

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is by now a well-established academic discourse and policy concept (Owen, von Schomberg, and Macnaghten 2021). It is usually conceived as related to the aims and process characteristics of research and innovation; responsible research and innovation produces societal value and is conducted in an open, value-sensitive and responsive way. RRI has generally had three focal areas: responsible research (public sector), responsible research-based innovation (public and private sectors), and responsible innovation (private sector). Research-based innovation, in particular related to emerging technologies, was the field motivating the development of RRI initially, especially through the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The responsible research part of RRI has perhaps been most developed through the so-called RRI keys of the European Commission. Responsible innovation, with more of a private sector profile, has not been similarly targeted by research funders and all its facets not equally explored in scholarly literature.

From innovation studies, we know that the notion of innovation is broad and includes market innovation, organisational innovation, business model innovation, etc. (Tavassoli and Karlsson 2015). These forms of innovation are targeted to a lesser extent by RRI. We also know that innovation should be seen as distributed. The triple helix perspective (Etzkowitz 2008) has been replaced by the quadruple (Carayannis, Campbell, and David 2009), and sometimes even the pentahelix perspectives (Leydesdorff 2011), consisting of governments, educational institutions, non-governmental institutions, society and industry. Even if RRI scholars often emphasise the collective or distributed nature of innovation (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012; Forsberg 2019), RRI generally targets researchers or innovators (or their organisations, such as universities). Other parts of the innovation systems are not equally in focus. The public/citizens are seen as sparring partners providing input to the researchers and innovators.

But what if we put the focus on citizens and their potential role as innovation agents themselves? Can we, within an RRI approach, reasonably expect them to be more active innovation agents, with expectations of them (that is, all of us) to be held more responsible for driving innovation in the right direction?

Food waste is a good case for exploring this question. Reducing food waste is institutionalised within Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 and is an important factor in reducing the carbon footprint of our consumption of the Earth’s resources (SDG 2015). Moreover, we are all consumers of food and responsible for generating waste in and outside of our homes. Research on food waste shows that the largest part of food waste is generated in the consumer link of the food value chains (Stefan et al. 2013; Stensgård et al. 2022).¹ It is a topic where we have clear agency and thus also responsibility. But are we innovation agents regarding food waste? And should we be?

Research shows that companies innovate to reduce food waste at the consumer level (see e.g. Aschemann-Witzel et al. 2018). Several measures have been taken. Smaller packages or plates are produced, and product expiry dates are presented as ‘best before, but not bad after’. Some packages have a printed encouragement for consumers to ‘smell, look, taste’ to assess product quality rather than just look at the expiry date. The open and close function of packaging is improved to extend quality, new packaging materials are tested, and information about the use of meal leftovers can be found in grocery stores or on the producers’ websites (Forsberg et al. 2021). But innovation targeting the consumer level is not the same as innovation involving consumers, which is our interest here. Pateman et al. (2020) address this issue and argue that directly involving members of the public in research projects dealing with food waste or food loss could hold a key role in better understanding and fighting these issues. As consumers have such a powerful impact on company behaviour and are the major food wasting actors, their actions are important to achieve responsible innovation for food waste reduction (Schanes, Dobernig, and Gözet 2018).

To better understand consumer responsibility related to food waste, we designed a study consisting of three world cafés with a subsection of consumers, namely higher education student consumers, to explore their perceptions of their own responsibility and how they could engage with the food value chain to innovate to reduce food waste, and complemented this engagement activity with questionnaires.² Our study may both further develop the scholarship on RRI and help identify practical strategies for consumer involvement in innovation for reducing food waste. We here first outline the theoretical framework for the article in greater detail to indicate the knowledge gap which we hope to reduce. We then present the data gathering methodologies and our results, and discuss the findings, before ultimately summarising our findings in a conclusion.

Theoretical background

Vincent Blok and colleagues (for instance Blok and Lemmens 2015; Blok et al. 2017; Brand and Blok 2019) have been key scholars in bringing innovation theory into the RRI discourse and applying this in private-sector innovation. There is a large area of scholarship in innovation theory with connections to RRI, and also addressing the role of consumers, like open innovation (von Hippel 2005; Chesbrough, Vanhaverbeke, and West 2006; Busse and Siebert 2017), design thinking (Cross 1982; Nathan 2018), quadruple helix (Carayannis, Campbell, and David 2009), etc. Common to such approaches is the acknowledgement of the role of consumers as something more than a public contributing with values to be considered in research; rather, here consumers have a more active and powerful role (see e.g. Branstad and Solem 2020).

Responsible private-sector innovation is also tangential to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. The two approaches ‘share an emphasis on companies’ responsibilities towards social goods as well as on stakeholder engagement’ (Gurzawska, Mäkinen, and Brey 2017, 4). However, RRI originates from the policy world and addresses both actual and potential, as well as present and future impacts, while CSR might be seen as a self-regulating mechanism, concerned mainly with the present impact on the community and environment, and is broader than only research and innovation activities (Ibidem). Also in the CSR and business ethics literature, we see some recent contributions taking the agency of consumers into account. Whereas CSR has been a prominent approach in business ethics since the 1960s (see e.g. Davis 1960), consumer social responsibility (ConSR) is a more recent addition reflecting this insight (Devinney et al. 2006).

Schlaile and colleagues have addressed the role of consumers both in the business ethics field and in the RRI field. In a contribution to the business ethics field from 2018 (Schlaile, Klein, and Böck 2018a) Schlaile et al. conceptualise ConSR and consider barriers to socially responsible consumption. Here, they outline five roles for consumer action: (1) Responsibility for information procurement; (2) Consumer citizenship (this is more political actions such as civic engagement, demonstrations, etc.); (3) Demand-side responsibility (involving pre-purchase decisions, consumption as voting and critical reflection on the actual purchase decision); (4) Responsibility for usage; and (5) Responsible disposal. Co-production and co-creation of value are examples of pre-purchase decisions, and these are terms often used in the RRI context.

Wilke et al. (2021) build on Schlaile, Klein, and Böck (2018a) and give further examples to their taxonomy. From our point of view category 3 is the most interesting, and Wilke et al. elaborate that co-creation can be understood as consumers taking part in the production process, for instance when consumers are involved in assembling an Ikea package into a closet (see also Etgar 2008), or more integrated into product development processes where the motive often is to allow a company to shape innovations according to market demands and increase its chances in the market, or because of value-based motives (see e.g. Hoffmann 2007). This latter meaning comes close to the notion of co-creation integral to RRI.

Turning now to RRI, we can observe that in RRI, people are often addressed as citizens (e.g. McShane and Sabadoz 2015), and citizens are treated as a privileged part of society whose values should be respected in research and innovation processes, for instance by giving them a voice in such processes (citizen engagement).³ The role of consumers brings people additional opportunities for acting and exercising power. Consumers, like other actors in the value chain, have a responsibility to the extent that they have agency. In the case of advanced emerging technologies, consumers may not have much agency as they are distant from this development, which is highly technical and often takes place in laboratories. However, in the case of consumer goods like food, consumer behaviour is a major influence on the whole innovation ecosystem (e.g. Papaoikonomou and Alarcon 2017).

In RRI there have been some contributions on consumers and responsible innovation where they have tended to regard consumers as recipients of innovations judging the attractiveness of the output by their willingness to pay (see e.g. Dalziel et al. 2018) or acceptance of a product (Schröter and Mergenthaler 2019). However, Schlaile et al. (2018b) explore the role of consumers in responsible innovation based on evolutionary economics, setting a good stage for further research in this trajectory. They argue that consumers’ roles in innovation can range from co-creation of value, co-production, user innovation, consumer innovation and consumption as voting and claim that ‘the former concept of consumer social responsibility (ConSR) has thus far been neglected in the responsible innovation literature’ (18). In 2022, in spite of Schlaile et al.’s contributions, it seems that this is still the case. In this paper, we follow up on Schlaile et al.’s call for ‘more detailed empirical studies […] that focus on consumers and their particular roles and capabilities in responsible innovation processes’ (2018b, 30) and contribute to reducing this research gap. The main research question in this study is thus: How do consumers conceptualise their responsibilities to contribute to food waste reduction innovation?

Materials and methods

To answer the research question, we conducted an exploratory study, in which we engaged with both final consumers and representatives from companies in the food value chain and let them interact with one another. We organised world cafés in three different cities: Fredrikstad and Oslo in Norway, and Pisa in Italy. A world café is an increasingly used method in qualitative research to provide groups of people with a café-style context, in which they can interact with one another and discuss questions provided by the researchers (Fouché and Light 2010; Lund et al. 2021). It is typically seen as an informal, relaxed process through which groups of people have the possibility of participating in a productive and structured conversation (Brown and Isaacs 2005). The café design was combined with questionnaires to gain more information about food waste attitudes among the student consumers and about all the participants’ views on the dialogue process.⁴

Research participants

In our case, we invited both higher education students as final consumers, and company representatives, to participate. The choice of involving students was made for practical and impact reasons. The practical reason was that we had easy access to students. The impact reason is related to the fact that all statistics (e.g. Stensgård et al. 2023) show that students/people in the age groups 18–29 and 30–39 years old are the ones that waste significantly more food compared to all other age groups. Moreover, young people, often starting life on their own, are in the process of shaping their food-related practices and behaviours. At the same time, higher education students are a particular category of consumers – they are young (and so, responsive to technological innovation), educated (cultural capital), and often not yet financially independent, which naturally pushes them towards efficiency in consumption, in search of money-saving opportunities, and potentially towards innovative consumer practices. By involving the students in the research, we would understand better the attitudes of the generation that will be the food wasting consumers of the future; thus, we targeted the group with the most potential impact on food waste in practice.

In Fredrikstad, the students predominantly came from a bachelor study in innovation and project leadership; in Oslo, they came from a variety of the social sciences; and in Pisa, they came from marketing courses. We contacted them by sending emails, posting ads on information boards, and approaching students in the university canteen. We advertised our world cafés as occasions to actively participate in academic research together with both other students and company representatives to talk about food waste.

The company representatives were identified through our networks and were promised to be given the chance to engage with their consumers not only as a target group, but at a higher level of discussing food waste innovation in general.

The choice of including company representatives as table hosts was made exactly because the BREAD project was an RRI project, meaning that RRI principles of anticipation, inclusion, reflection and responsiveness also applied to the project and the way that it supported company food waste innovation. With this design, we allowed the companies to engage with consumers, in order to create reflection both among staff involved in company innovation processes and among consumers.

In our world café setup, the students circulated between four different tables, each moderated by one company representative (i.e. table host). In Fredrikstad, we had 10 students (5 male, 5 female; average age = 24.0 years) and four people from companies (i.e. a university canteen, two food producing industry representatives and one from the industry organisation for food waste reduction); in Oslo, we had 14 students (7 male, 7 female; average age = 26.4 years) and four people from companies (i.e. two sustainability managers from the leading grocery chains, one representative from a meat producing company and one from the industry organisation for food waste reduction); and in Pisa we had 18 students (5 male, 13 female; average age = 22.8 years) and four people from companies (i.e. one university canteen representative; one local farm owner; one organic food shop director; one food delivery company owner). We used the questionnaire data to shed light on the qualitative data from the world cafés.

Procedure to collect data

When the guests arrived at each location, we divided them into four tables. Each table consisted of 4 or 5 students and was coordinated by a table host from a company. They were informed about the study, their participation, their rights and possibility to withdraw from the study, and signed an informed consent form. They were given a questionnaire on paper, which they filled out. The world café was then started with a 15 min long introductory presentation carried out by one of the authors explaining very briefly about the project, RRI, the purpose of the café and the café process. Thereafter, the participants present at each table began the discussion of the topic we assigned to that table, rotating among the tables every 20 min, leaving the company representatives in their places. In this way, the students could start a new discussion, on a new topic, while the company representatives were able to add on the previous discussion, continuing to talk about the same topic but with new people. The table hosts, who had in advance received guiding questions that would assist them if the discussions seemed difficult, remained at their table, chairing the discussion, writing notes on a paper tablecloth, and introducing the new groups to what had previously been discussed. We did four rotations in all, for a total of 80 min, so that all four groups of students could address the four questions we prepared (presented in Norwegian and Italian):

1. What is my responsibility as a consumer to reduce food waste?

2. What do you need in order to take more responsibility for food waste as a consumer?

3. What responsibility do you expect the companies in the food value chain to take to reduce food waste?

4. How can you as a private person influence the companies in the food value chain to think in novel ways to prevent food waste?

After the last round of discussions finished, a plenary session started in which each table host summarised the key points that emerged from the four groups of students. This part of the gathering was recorded and transcribed. A short questionnaire (in Fredrikstad and Oslo followed up by a short interview) was then submitted to the company representatives to understand their own assessment of the overall experience. Besides, as researchers, we acted as observers of the table discussions and took notes ourselves.

The three world cafés were organised between October and November 2021, but our data collection finished in March 2022, when, after Christmas, we contacted the students who had participated in our world cafés to send them another questionnaire. This new questionnaire was similar to that which they filled in before starting the world cafés, but we added a new question to ask them how much they had changed their food waste habits during Christmas. This second questionnaire, which was submitted through an online platform (i.e. Google Forms), aimed at comparing the responses collected during the world cafés with those collected a few months later and, most importantly, after becoming more aware of the food waste issue. In other words, the choice of sending out the questionnaire twice was to assess whether this intervention (the world cafés) in fact changed anything (attitudes or behaviour)among the participants.

The questionnaire we submitted to the students was based on Stefan et al. (2013). Among the variables proposed by Stefan et al. (2013), considering our attention to consumers’ perception of their responsibility in the food waste problem, we were particularly interested in estimating the participants’ moral attitudes, lack of concern, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norms (for an overview of the questions see Table 3 on page 12). In the questionnaire sent out after Christmas, we added one further question: ‘During the holiday season this year, did you change some of your practices to try to reduce food waste?’, 1 = very little / 5 = very much. Unfortunately, not all the students contacted in the first round also accepted to respond to the second round; so, while we collected 42 responses before Christmas, by summing up Fredrikstad, Oslo, and Pisa; we obtained 28 responses after Christmas, with a total 70 responses in the two questionnaires.

Finally, the questionnaire for the company representatives was collected after the plenary section. We asked a few questions to better understand their experience as table hosts (e.g. ‘To what extent did you find it easy or difficult to explain the topic of the table? Do you now have new ideas for how consumers can be involved in your company’s food waste innovation process? What did you learn from hosting the table discussions?’).

Data analysis

Regarding the notes we took during the world café’s table discussions and plenary presentations, we used a common procedure in qualitative data research (Spiggle 1994) to examine them. We collected the summaries from the three cafés related to each table question. Using the Dedoose software v.9.0⁵, this material was labelled according to topics emerging from the texts. Regarding the students’ questionnaires, frequency tables were generated. We also conducted inductive research looking at the declarations at the individual level, focusing on the individual data on moral attitudes, lack of concern, perceived behavioural control and subjective norms. Here we conducted a descriptive analysis of the extreme values for all variables in order to find common patterns. This resulted in several consumer categories, inspired by consumer behaviour research of Di Talia, Simeone, and Scarpato (2019), Gilli, Mancinelli, and Nicolli (2018), Auger, Devinney, and Louviere (2010), and Vermeir and Verbeke (2006).

The results of our analyses are presented below.

Results

Results from the analysis of responses to the four questions

When analysing the responses to the four questions together, the following codes emerged: Communication with store or producer (17 mentions), Gaining information or knowledge (15 mentions), Increased awareness/attitude change (10 mentions), New eating/buying behaviour (10 mentions), Other (10 mentions), Planning (9 mentions), Packaging/portioning (9 mentions), Using/developing technology to reduce food waste (9 mentions), Storage (8 mentions), Making demands to producers or suppliers (5 mentions), Using leftovers or less attractive foods (3 mentions), Smell, taste, look (2 mentions), Trust (2 mentions), Shorter value chains (2 mentions), Incentives (2 mentions), and Producers/suppliers making demands to consumers (1 mention).

By breaking down the four questions, we then saw different patterns (see Table 1).

Table 1. Codes identified and the number of times they were applied per question.

	Communication with store or producer	Gaining information or knowledge	Increased awareness/attitude change	New eating/buying behaviour	Other	Planning	Packaging/portioning	Using/developing technology to reduce food waste	Storage	Making demands to producers or suppliers	Using leftovers or less attractive foods	Smell, taste, look	Trust	Shorter value chains	Incentives	Producers/suppliers making demands to consumers	Totals
1. What is my responsibility as a consumer to reduce food waste?	3	2	1	3	2	5	0	1	4	4	2	2	0	0	0	1	30
2. What do you need in order to take more responsibility for food waste as a consumer?	0	7	7	2	5	4	2	5	1	1	0	0	0	0	2	0	36
3. What responsibility do you expect the companies in the food value chain to take to reduce food waste?	0	2	2	1	0	0	4	0	2	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	13
4. How can you as a private person influence the companies in the food value chain to think in novel ways to prevent food waste?	14	4	0	4	3	0	3	3	1	0	1	0	2	0	0	0	35
Totals	17	15	10	10	10	9	9	9	8	5	3	2	2	2	2	1	0

Question 1: The students seem to conceptualise their own responsibility much in the realm of better planning of their shopping and taking better care of their food at home. They also often mention their responsibility to make demands to the food producers or deliverers and their responsibility to communicate more with the grocery stores and the food producers. They talk about engaging in new shopping or eating behaviour (sharing food; shopping more often, but in smaller volumes, etc.).

Question 2: The two most frequently mentioned needs are information/knowledge and, related to this, more awareness of the food waste aspects of food behaviour. Next to these issues, the students mention new technology, for example, an ‘app where you write down food waste and can see how much you actually throw away and how much money this is’ or ‘Smart refrigerator: QR code on food before putting it in the refrigerator’.

Question 3: The students did not have as many views on what the companies should do as they did on the other questions. Their most frequently mentioned issue was about packaging to reduce food waste.

Question 4: The topic of communication with store or producer, mentioned in question 1, is very important in the students’ answers to the last question. In the two Norwegian workshops, most of the discussion of this question revolved around communication. In addition to the importance of better communication, especially the Italian workshop addressed how new buying and eating behaviour could contribute to the companies’ innovation processes, assumedly referring to the consumers’ power in the market.

As question 4 is the most relevant for this article, it is interesting to look at the distribution of points made across the three world cafés (see Table 2).

Table 2. Distribution of points regarding question 4.

	Communication with store or producer	Gaining information or knowledge	New eating/buying behaviour	Other	Packaging/portioning	Storage	Trust	Using leftovers or less attractive foods	Using/developing technology to reduce food waste	Totals
Oslo	6	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	8
Pisa	1	1	4	1	3	1	1	1	3	16
Fredrikstad	7	1	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	11
Totals	14	4	4	3	3	1	2	1	3	0

Table 2 shows that, as already noted, communication with store or producer is the topic most often mentioned. The difference in scoring for Pisa may reflect that the table host in the Pisa workshop did not understand the question to be discussed in the same way as in the two Norwegian workshops, so food waste reduction measures were discussed more generally than the engagement of consumers in companies’ innovation processes.

The answers summarised in the Fredrikstad and Oslo workshops were:

Fredrikstad: People do not experience that there is a close dialogue between consumer and company. The company is responsible for creating this dialogue. As a consumer, you do not feel that your own voice is important. If several consumers come together and the companies facilitate dialogue, it can be useful. Companies must show that they think that feedback from consumers is important. One should focus on the fact that food waste is a shared problem. It is important that consumers complain about products as feedback to the companies. There should be incentives for consumers to get involved and provide feedback. Trust and a sense of belonging are important. There should be more information to consumers about the production process – this creates ownership and knowledge that can lead to better feedback. If there are new products launched in the shops, it is important to take out the products that do not sell as well – one product in, one product out.

Oslo: The dialogue one expects to be present is not there. The distance between the company and the consumer must be reduced. The food chain must put this in a system – make it easy to talk to companies about this. There must be an incentive to give feedback to companies: ‘show that my voice is important, but also give me something in return’. Companies should not spend advertising money on new products, but instead provide inspiration to be creative with discounted items – encourage customers to buy discounted items. Companies should use existing channels (e.g. customer apps) more actively to establish a dialogue with customers about sustainability and food waste. Information must be easily accessible; more information creates awareness.

It can be noted that the students expect the companies to involve them in the company’s innovation processes but at the same time tend to be rather passive, not using any of the existing communication channels apart from the decision to buy/not buy certain products. We can infer that they expect an engagement that would be impersonal, easy, time-efficient and impactful.

In the Pisa workshop, the participants provided advice on what companies could do (better labels, better packaging, etc.) or what consumers could do (avoid big shopping sprees, deep freeze products, etc.), but not so much on the collaboration between consumers and companies. The table hosts there did thus not comment on the collaboration/dialogue issues.

Results from the student questionnaire study

We here only highlight results that are related to consumers’ perceptions of their responsibilities. In the questionnaire, there were no questions directly related to consumers’ involvement in innovation processes, but there were questions related to their food waste behaviour, their worries about the impact of their food waste, their moral attitudes and how they were subjected to norms. Their knowledge of food waste was measured by asking about the share of food waste generated in the different links of the value chain, where their assessment of the households’ share was the most interesting (see Table 3).

Table 3. Questions 1–5: ‘(a) Not at all, (b) Less than a tenth, (c) More than a tenth but less than a quarter, (d) More than a quarter but less than a half, (e) More than a half’ 1 = strongly disagree/7 = strongly agree.

No	N = 42	Factors	Mean	St. dev.
1	How much food would you say that you throw away, of what you buy and/or grow, in a regular week?	Food waste	2.2	0.7
2	How much milk and dairy products would you say that you throw away, of what you buy and/or grow, in a regular week?	Food waste	1.6	0.8
3	How much fresh fruits and vegetables would you say that you throw away, of what you buy and/or grow, in a regular week?	Food waste	2.1	0.8
4	How much meat and fish would you say that you throw away, of what you buy and/or grow, in a regular week?	Food waste	1.3	0.5
5	How much bread and other bakery products would you say that you throw away, of what you buy and/or grow, in a regular week?	Food waste	2.0	1.0
6	How likely is it that you will not throw away food during the next week?	Intention not to waste food	4.0	2.0
7	I intend not to throw away any food over the next week	Intention not to waste food	5.9	1.6
8	In general, I try very hard not to throw away food	Intention not to waste food	6.2	1.1
9	How frequently do you make a list of the food you want to buy prior to your shopping trip?	Planning routines	4.7	2.0
10	How frequently do you check your food inventories prior to your shopping trip?	Planning routines	5.3	1.1
11	How often do you plan your meals, in advance, for several days ahead?	Planning routines	4.2	1.6
12	How frequently would you say that you buy too much food (more than you need or can eat) when you go shopping?	Shopping routines	3.1	1.6
13	How frequently would you say that you buy food items that you did not intend to buy?	Shopping routines	3.9	1.7
14	Throwing away food does not bother me.	Moral attitudes	3.2	1.8
15	When I throw away food, I feel guilty.	Moral attitudes	4.0	2.5
16	I do not really worry about the environmental impact of the food that I throw away.	Lack of concern	3.8	2.3
17	I do not really worry about the impact of my food waste on the distribution of resources in the world	Lack of concern	2.4	1.4
18	I do not really worry about the amount of food that I throw away	Lack of concern	2.8	1.6
19	I do not really worry about the cost of the food that I throw away	Lack of concern	2.6	1.8
20	Most people important to me disapprove of me cooking/preparing more than enough food.	Subjected to norms	2.1	1.4
21	Most people important to me disapprove of me throwing out some food.	Subjected to norms	3.9	1.9
22	It is very difficult for me to predict exactly how much food is going to be eaten in my household over a regular week.	Perceived behavioural control	4.0	1.9
23	I am able to cook and prepare exactly the amount of food that my household needs.	Perceived behavioural control	4.4	1.9
24	I am able to buy exactly the amount of food that my household needs.	Perceived behavioural control	4.5	1.8
25	Estimated food waste generated in the different steps in the chain
(a)	Food producers		17.2	10.6
(b)	Food industry		21.6	12.3
(c)	Retail		26.7	12.1
(d)	Hotels/Restaurants		19.6	11.3
(e)	Households Correct 54%		17.2	8.3

Question 6: Scale 1–7: where 1 = Not at all likely and 7 = Extremely likely. Questions 7–8: Scale: ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (7). Questions 9–13: Scale: ‘never’ (1) to ‘always’ (7). Questions 14–24: Scale: ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (7). Question 25: percentage of food waste indicated for the chain steps.

Generally, this sample has an inadequate understanding of where food waste is generated. Most important, when asked to indicate how much households contribute to food waste the mean answer in the Norwegian sample is 17%, while in reality, it is 54% in Norway.⁶ The respondents’ understanding of the food waste problem is therefore not fully informed.

In general, the low number of respondents did not allow us to identify many significant relations. For our purposes, the most interesting one is the significant difference in the measures of Moral attitudes before and after Christmas (see Table 4). ‘Moral attitudes’ is a construct consisting of Throwing away food does not bother me and When I throw away food I feel guilty.

Table 4. The difference in mean attitudes before and after Christmas.

	Before Christmas (N = 42)	After Christmas (N = 28)	Comparison
Moral attitudes	5.44	6.23	t(68) = −2.39, p < 0.05
Lack of concern	2.44	2.22	t(68) = 0.79, p > 0.05
Subjective norms	3.61	4.34	t(68) = −1.97, p > 0.05

We will comment further on this finding in the discussion below.

Consumer types identified through extreme positions

Some respondents indicated very strong positions on some of the questions we asked. We interpret this to indicate that they felt sure about their position on these issues.

The four variables where respondents reflected on their responsibilities and daily practices were moral attitudes, lack of concern, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control (see Table 5). Only respondents that scored a 7 or a 1 are included in this table.

Table 5. Grouping respondents with similar extreme positions.

Sample	Moral attitudes	Lack concern	Subj norms	Perceived control	Observations
1/Pisa	7.00	1.25	5.50	6.00	Extremely moral, highly concerned and subjected to norms, with a good perceived behavioural control (conscious)
1	7.00	1.25	4.50	2.67	Extremely moral, highly concerned and subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
1	7.00	2.25	5.00	3.33	Extremely moral, highly concerned and subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
1	7.00	1.75	1.00	7.00	Extremely moral, highly concerned and with an extremely good behavioural control but not subjected to norms (intrinsic)
1	7.00	2.00	6.50	2.67	Extremely moral, highly concerned and subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
1	7.00	2.75	6.00	1.33	Extremely moral, highly concerned and subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
1	7.00	1.00	5.50	3.00	Extremely moral, highly concerned and subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
1	6.00	7.00	1.50	5.00	Not moral, highly unconcerned, not subjected to norms, but with a good perceived behavioural control (instrumental)
2/Fr.stad	7.00	2.00	4.00	3.67	Extremely moral, highly concerned and subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
2	7.00	2.75	2.50	3.00	Extremely moral, highly concerned, not subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
2	7.00	3.00	1.50	2.67	Extremely moral, highly concerned, not subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
2	6.50	1.00	1.00	5.67	Extremely moral and concerned and with extreme behavioural control but not subjected to norms (intrinsic)
3/Oslo	7.00	1.00	4.00	7.00	Extremely moral and concerned and with extreme behavioural control but not subjected to norms (intrinsic)
3	3.00	3.25	4.00	7.00	Not very moral, not very concerned, not very subjected to norms but with extreme perceived behavioural control (instrumental)
3	3.50	4.50	4.00	7.00	Not very moral, not very concerned, not very subjected to norms but with extreme perceived behavioural control (instrumental)
3	7.00	1.75	1.50	4.33	Extremely moral, highly concerned and not subjected to norms but struggling with behavioural control
3	4.00	2.25	1.00	5.33	Not very moral, not very concerned, extremely not subjected to norms but with good perceived behavioural control (instrumental)
3	7.00	2.00	4.50	5.67	Extremely moral, highly concerned and subjected to norms with a good perceived behavioural control (conscious)

Each row represents one respondent and the numerical score under each factor is the means of the scores for the items belonging to the respective factor.

The most extremely positive own categorisation can be found in the moral attitude variable, where students very often see themselves as extremely moral and no respondent would describe herself/himself as extremely immoral.

Interestingly, significantly fewer respondents see themselves as extremely concerned compared to those claiming an extremely moral attitude. Here we only have one in each workshop. There was one extremely unconcerned respondent in Pisa, but this might be a misunderstanding of the question as this category (lack of concern) had a reversed scale.

It is also noteworthy that there was no extreme value in claiming that people important to the respondent disapproved of cooking too large meals or throwing away food. In fact, one person in each group claimed that they were not at all surrounded by people with such values.

The last variable, perceived behavioural control, shows only positive extremes. One person in Pisa and 3 in Oslo see themselves as having extremely high behavioural control in relation to food waste.

The grouping of respondents with extreme statements made it possible for us to identify some clear profiles among the participants. The typology has been developed inductively but each category has already some track record in consumer behaviour research. Similar consumer categories have been also developed in business reports (i.a. Enlighteneds, Aspirationals, Practicals, and Indifferents identified by Bemporad and Baranowski 2007).

As Table 6 shows, the largest group are the struggling consumers, with a clear attitude-behaviour gap, who cannot bridge their identity and practice. The second largest group are instrumental consumers, followed by intrinsic and conscious.

Table 6. Own consumer grouping from the inductive analysis of extreme values in our survey, modified from Di Talia, Simeone, and Scarpato (2019), Gilli, Mancinelli, and Nicolli (2018), Auger, Devinney, and Louviere (2010), Vermeir and Verbeke (2006).

Consumer category	General definition	Food waste behaviour	Number of respondents in the first round of the questionnaire
Conscious	Conscious consumers are those with a ‘conscious and deliberate choice to make certain consumption decisions based on personal and moral beliefs’ (Auger, Devinney, and Louviere 2010)	Food waste is a serious problem, a reason for concern, they know the consequences and try to address it in their behaviour	2: 1 in Pisa, 1 in Oslo
Intrinsic	For intrinsic consumers ‘intrinsic motivation comes from an inner need to perform an action or to adopt a certain behaviour. For intrinsically motivated people, the reward comes from the action itself’ (Gilli, Mancinelli, and Nicolli 2018)	Food waste is a serious problem and a reason for individual concern, they are very good at addressing it in their own behaviour and disregard opinion of others, societal norms, and expectations	3: 1 in Pisa, 1 in Fredrikstad, 1 in Oslo
Struggling	Struggling consumers often experience the typical attitude-behaviour gap defined as ‘a gap between the positive attitude of consumers and their actual behaviour’ (Vermeir and Verbeke 2006)	Food waste is perceived a serious problem and a big reason for concern, nevertheless there is a mismatch between the theory and practice in controlling own food waste related behaviour	9: 5 in Pisa, 3 in Fredrikstad, 1 in Oslo
Instru-mental	Instrumental consumers ‘already show a slight tendency to avoid domestic waste because they do not throw away good food, even if they are unaware of the environmental, economic and ethical consequences of food waste’ (Di Talia, Simeone, and Scarpato 2019)	Food waste is not perceived a serious problem and they are not concerned, not very subjected to norms but nevertheless they are good in controlling their behaviour and avoiding waste (perhaps because avoiding food waste helps with other goals, having control, saving money, being efficient)	4: 1 in Pisa, 3 in Oslo

Another interesting observation is that among those with perceived extreme behavioural control, we only see the intrinsic or instrumental consumers. It means that among those who claim to be best in implementing food waste behaviours we have only people who do it for instrumental reasons (e.g. money saving) or for themselves, not because they are experiencing strong social norms. Stefan et al. (2013) similarly showed that the social norms of disapproval of food waste did not influence the intention not to waste food. It seems surprising that no conscious consumer (with a strong moral attitude and high concern over the environment) managed to bridge this with a corresponding strong behaviour. It is possible, though, that those students could always see some room for improvement or that they are more critical and honest in judging their daily practices.

Discussion

Looking at the results across the three different data sources we can find some interesting tendencies in the material.

Communication and action

Consumers have for a long time been involved in market research and product development in the food sector, for instance through focus groups. Traditionally, they are involved downstream in the innovation process, when different variants of products or packaging are developed, and the consumers are the ‘judge’ that chooses among these. More upstream alternatives might be to establish a ‘user council’ at the company or industry level where more principled questions could be discussed that could form the basis for further innovation in the food value chains. However, as the empirical material suggests, it might be difficult to envisage such alternative ways for consumers to be involved in the companies’ innovation processes, both for the companies and the consumers. Moreover, it is not certain that consumers would feel represented by such user councils or feel that it is easier to contact them than the companies.

In essence, the material suggests that insufficient two-way communication between companies and consumers is a major barrier for consumers to get involved in companies’ innovation processes. The world café participants suggest innovative ways to engage, primarily through new technology. It is interesting that consumers that participated in the cafés feel estranged even in the face of existing industry communication initiatives, like QR codes and social media presence. When presenting the results from the world cafés to the BREAD project’s ‘critical friends’ (an RRI inspired advisory board), a representative from food producers was disappointed that the students did not seem to appreciate (or know about) their initiatives intended to make it easier to provide feedback. As a consequence of this, a question to be asked is if the respondents show signs of being ‘morally lazy’ as consumers. The questionnaire sheds some light on this. In the cafés all agreed that they should not waste food, but the questionnaires reveal that they often buy too much (Q12, mean = 3.1). Moreover, the students seem to be only fairly troubled by throwing away food (Q15, mean = 3.2). They feel slightly guilty (mean = 4.0). They neither agree nor disagree with the statement that the environmental impacts of their food waste are a worry (Q8, mean = 3.8), though they seem to care more about the global distributional impacts (Q17, mean = 2.4). Though they disagree with the statement that they don’t worry about the amount they waste (Q18, mean = 2.8), this may be related to the economic costs for them (Q19, mean = 2.6). The social pressure on them is ambiguous: on one hand, they say that people important to them slightly disapprove of them throwing food, on the other hand, few would agree that there is social pressure to avoid abundance on the table. This lukewarm engagement in the topic of food waste may explain why the sample has not made any extra efforts to get acquainted with (or use) the channels they have to engage with the companies and more actively demand action from them.

If there is such a moral laziness this can perhaps be explained by the low moral intensity Jones (1991) of this issue for the students. Moral intensity is a construct consisting of issue-contingent elements of magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and concentration of effect, where these elements together will influence how strongly an individual will recognise an issue as moral, establish moral intent and conduct ethical behaviour. Our data do not shed light on these aspects, but this would be relevant for further research and could give an indication of how engagement activities by the companies could be strengthened by increasing the perceived moral intensity of such involvement by consumers.

Schlaile, Klein, and Böck (2018a) refer to several studies that have also found this value-action gap or attitude-behaviour gap and they explain this gap by several factors. For our purpose, it is sufficient to note that this confirms our findings. Going back to Schlaile et al. (2018b), we agree with their conclusion:

Policies aimed at promoting responsible innovation should therefore address all actors within innovation networks with sufficient capabilities and influence to contribute towards making this complex system more ‘responsible’. For consumers, this means accepting their share of responsibility, whereas institutional support (e.g. by the state) – including consumer education – may also prove necessary for consumer empowerment. (30)

Like our students, Martinez-Canas et al. (2016) suggest that ICT platforms may be a good way to involve such consumers, and perhaps this would especially apply to young consumers. However, they caution against ‘empty value co-creation strategies’ (14), for instance through social media, and state that top management commitment is important for real engagement, which, they describe, has significant benefits both for the companies and the consumers. Braun et al. (2020) discuss from an RRI point of view the potential risks and benefits of using digital platforms (like Zoom) for research and public engagement activities. Applying the RRI AIRR principles (anticipation, inclusion, reflection and responsiveness, see Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten (2013)) they see many challenges to real deliberation when using these platforms; challenges that would need to be taken into account if choosing to engage publics in these ways. In their view, one should reflect ‘on the way such platforms limit the ability to enter into conversations and amplify hierarchies and power structures’ (685). The role of power, feelings of being disempowered and empowerment in the engagement of consumers in companies’ food waste innovation processes is addressed in the ConSR literature, e.g. by Schlaile, Klein, and Böck (2018a; 2018b) and applies in our context as well, though we do not have the space to engage more with this broad issue here, so it must be left for further research.

Awareness as a driver?

It appears that awareness raising activities are called for, perhaps not only from the companies but from the state, which also has to deliver on SDG 12.3. There is an indication that awareness helps from the two rounds of the student questionnaire that we distributed. There was a small, but significant increase in the students that reported feeling guilty when throwing food in the second round. This could potentially be explained by increased attention to the issue due to their involvement in the study. However, many studies show that similar food waste experiments and interventions tend only to have a temporal effect and in a long-term perspective many return to their previous, less aware, but easier and more automatic behavioural patterns. The challenge for behavioural change and awareness raising interventions is to significantly ‘disrupt’ routinised practices and maintain new consumer habits (Cox et al. 2010).

The questionnaire study also measured what percentages of food waste the participants thought were related to the different steps in the value chain. As mentioned, in Norway, more than half of all food waste is generated in households (Stensgård et al. 2022). But on average the Norwegian students believed that the households accounted for only 17%. This lack of knowledge may be a cause of the lukewarm significance the students attributed to food waste and also their lack of engagement through the channels that actually exist. Schröter and Mergenthaler (2019), in a study from another field, similarly conclude with a call for more knowledge when they say that ‘the implementation of the RI concept in layer poultry farming requires comprehensive educational work among consumers’ (494).

However, it is not necessarily the case that consumers would take more responsibility even with a better understanding of the facts of food waste. In the context of consumer fashion, Turunen and Halme (2021) state it bluntly: ‘It is an ongoing frustration for sustainable consumption research and practice that consumers’ sustainability-oriented attitudes do not readily translate into action’. They state that the two main, and so far unsuccessful, ways to communicate sustainability information are third-party verified sustainability labels and company free-form communication about their products. However, it may still be the case that information campaigns from public authorities simply shedding light on the problem could be effective. But in the context of young consumers (like we included in the study), Hume (2010) concludes:

Although these groups of consumers are considered socially, economically, and environmentally conscious, a clear pattern of contradiction exists between what they know and what they practice in regard to sustainability efforts. Such findings have led to the suggestion for the need for marketing innovations and practices to take a societal stance and focus on the self-interested nature of this cohort. (392)

From our study we can reaffirm the importance of finding alternative ways to involve consumers to change their own practices and engage more with the food value chains’ innovation for reducing food waste.

The passive versus the active role of consumers in responsible innovation processes

Going back to our research question about the way consumers conceptualise their responsibilities, our results suggest that they tend to take a passive role vis-à-vis the food companies, requesting more action from the companies’ side, but not taking much action themselves.

The passive role of consumers in food innovation processes is well documented (Busse and Siebert 2017; Wilke et al. 2021). Busse and Siebert (2017) conducted a literature review that showed that the consumer involvement approaches and methods documented in the innovation literature are generally what von Hippel (1978) calls manufacturer-active paradigm (MAP) rather than consumer-active paradigm (CAP). MAP approaches tend to involve consumers more superficially in innovation processes, mostly as choosers in the market. Busse and Siebert mention crowdsourcing, innovation toolkits and living labs as the approaches with the highest integration and interaction intensity. From our samples of consumers and company representatives it appeared that more consumer active approaches were not known. The consumer-active approaches must be organised by someone; that could be food companies, but also food industry organisations or even consumer associations.

Busse and Siebert show that it is mainly medium and large sized firms that adopt open innovation strategies and CAP, as they invest more in R&D and collaborate more with other actors. Therefore, these would seem to have a responsibility to engage related actors in the food value chains in their active engagement also with the consumers, in order to achieve effective total food waste reduction and not just move the food waste generation to other links in the chain. This requires, according to Busse and Siebert, the presence of factors such as awareness within the companies, a willingness to change organisational routines, a willingness to open up innovation processes and spend time and resources on such involvement, as well as trust among value chain actors. A follow-up study of such company willingness would be useful.

Our data also indicate that the framing of the innovation issue might have an effect. When the consumers discussed innovation, they referred to innovations not necessarily conducted by, or even initiated by, the food value chain companies. Apps, smart fridges, and the like are digital innovations and not necessarily innovations conducted by the food companies themselves. In that sense, framing food waste innovation in terms of IT and electronics might have a more engaging effect. Thinking outside the value chain, inviting in broader constellations, thus seems to be a practical follow-up point from this insight.

What we are discussing in this article, is the ‘pre-purchase decisions’ sub-category of Schlaile et al.’s (3). Demand-side responsibility. It should be noted that even if our consumer participants seemed to take a passive role vis-à-vis company innovation processes, they might still be considered active in other roles. Relating the responses to the first question in the world cafés to Schlaile, Klein, and Böck’s (2018a) five roles for consumer action, the students seem to understand their responsibility as connected to better planning (what Schlaile et al. call ‘critical reflection on the actual purchase decision’, still under the ‘demand-side responsibility’, but a less active role than co-creation) and usage (sub-category 4). ‘Making demand on producers or suppliers’ is also mentioned 5 times, but this is still one-way communication, and is perhaps also best placed in the ‘critical reflection on the actual purchase decision’, which, according to Schlaile et al. includes critically reflecting on one’s needs.

The passive role of the respondents might be a function of the set-up of the food value chains, with mass markets and chains of many links leading to a perceived lack of power. However, learning from the energy sector, there may be trends towards a change from the passive consumer to the active ‘prosumer’:

The increasing involvement of citizens energy production and management [sic] can be seen in the rapid growth of local energy co-operatives […]. The diminished role of households and local communities to that of passive consumers in the centralized energy systems is changing to active prosumers. (Koirala, van Oost, and van der Windt 2018, 573)

This matches what was most emphasised in the Italian world café, namely a call for more local food supply.

It is a possibility that students think that they waste little and that they have done their part; thus, they require more action from the industry. After all, most answers to question no. 1 ‘How much food would you say that you throw away, of what you buy and/or grow, in a regular week’ are the first and second options (less than 10% or nothing at all). If this is the case, these students are not representative of their age cohort. It is also possible that they underestimate their own waste and that more correct knowledge would motivate behavioural change.

Who could most easily be involved in value chain innovation processes?

Looking at our identified profiles from Table 5 we may gain more understanding of what category of consumers may be best to target for engaging in value chain innovation processes. Summarising the replies from all locations and both questionnaire rounds, we received 28 replies claiming the highest possible moral attitude. However, as shown in Table 5, we see a strong mismatch between the highest moral attitude and how it translates to real food waste related behaviour as in the typical attitude-behaviour gap. When the mismatch is very strong, we capture it with the ‘struggling’ consumer category. But even conscious consumers seem to have space for improvement of their perceived behavioural control. It seems that both conscious and struggling consumers should be a good target for engaging with the innovation processes – this could help them to improve and address the mismatch between the declaration and action.

The intrinsic group is also a good target. This group is characterised by having strong moral values even if people close to them are not worried about food waste. Based on their conviction they may want to influence commercial actors’ innovation processes. Martinez-Canas et al. (2016) refer to Kotler, Kartajaya, and Setiawan’s (2010) concept of ethical values-driven Marketing 3.0 paradigm and highlight ethical values and transcendent motivations as important in encouraging consumers to engage in co-creation activities, and this would seem to apply to the respondents expressing high moral attitudes in our selection.

Instrumental consumers seem to be beyond the reach for dialogue on company innovations. This group reduces food waste for instrumental reasons and may not be motivated to contribute extra to engage in the issue. They may respond to financial rewards for such participation, but this might not be sufficient for motivating real engagement (see e.g. Martinez-Canas et al. (2016)).

Limitations of the research

This was a small study with results that need to be interpreted with caution. Misunderstanding the scales may have affected some of the scoring. Interpreting the results in light of literature is therefore important and we find that current literature supports our findings from this smaller, but novel, study.

The café hosts reported that question 4 was the most difficult for participants to understand and discuss. This taken into account, it should be clear that the hosts of these tables might have influenced the discussions more than at the other tables. The introductory presentation in the cafés could also have affected the discussions in the tables, but not the first round of questionnaire answers, as these were filled in before any presentation was given.

The choice of including students can be discussed. On one hand, they are among those who waste the most and will have many years ahead as potential food wasters. On the other hand, they may not have developed clear food related routines yet, so their reporting may be less grounded in real practices.

Conclusions

This study has contributed to the state-of-the-art in RRI research by discussing the role of consumer responsibilities in the broader innovation system. It has contributed to the RRI discourse with insights from innovation theory, business ethics and consumer studies. It has added to Schlaile et al. (2018b) with new evidence from the food waste sector. It has also added to the food waste literature by highlighting the actual and potential role of consumers in company food waste innovation processes.

The consumers in this study, especially in Norway, seem to support the RRI dimensions of inclusion and believe that the companies as innovation actors should apply this principle. However, it appears that the students conceptualise their own responsibilities to get involved and to contribute to food waste reduction innovation in a passive way, not using current possibilities for communication with food companies. Rather they see their food waste responsibilities as mostly related to their own planning and storage of food and buying behaviour. Within the paradigm of responsible innovation, one could argue that consumers should take a more active role in innovation processes. In the case of food waste reduction such a role can be related both to further consumer pressure for food waste reduction in the food value chains and making it easier to reduce food waste at the end consumer level by providing lay knowledge and creative ideas for innovation solutions at home and when eating out.

From the point of view of responsible innovation processes in commercial food value chain actors, it should be acknowledged that current communication practices are not sufficient for integrating consumers in innovation with the purpose of reducing food waste (both in the companies and in the households) in a sufficiently intensive way. More open and interactive industry-led processes, which could be online, might be needed. Involving the ICT and household appliances industries in these processes may be fertile and in line with consumer ideas. In parallel, government actors should initiate campaigns to increase public attention to the household food waste problem motivating them to make use of the interactive processes that are potentially opened up.

To solve the important SDG of halving food waste by 50% by 2030, the private and public sectors and consumers will need to work together to engage in responsible innovation processes at all levels (Stensgård et al. 2023). Though our study is limited we document a lack of engagement and a lack of knowledge. There thus seems to be significant room for building competence and capacity to increase such engagement, making use of the existing knowledge base to build strategies, methods, and incentives.

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.

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.

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.