Does Food Shopping Behaviour Determine Food Waste Vulnerability in Private Households? Quantitative Analysis on Case Studies from Germany

Abstract

The discussion about food waste is conducted from many different scientific perspectives. Studies from the perspective of retail geography have hardly been part of this so far. Within the framework of own empirical studies 2020–2022 for case studies from Germany, postal and online surveys were conducted in urban and rural areas in order to correlate psychographic attitudes according to self-assessment about food and shopping with practical shopping and disposal behaviour. Four different clusters can be distinguished, demonstrating that food waste realities are associated with characteristic attitude sets of groups of people as either unconscious wasters or conscious savers. Waste baskets are visualised via relational networks, which help to capture the complexity and completeness of sources of food waste in private households. This approach makes it possible to expand the causes of food waste not only in private households themselves, but also from upstream purchasing practices and the retail geographical characteristics of individual business formats. This study shows that the differences between groups and their receptiveness to the issue of food waste do not diverge systematically, but that niche-like variations in attitudes or purchasing behaviour can make a big difference.