Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Food Purchasing, Food Packaging, and Food Wastage

Abstract

Despite the negative impacts caused by the drawn-out COVID-19 pandemic on the usual way of life and health of billions around the world, the pandemic’s particular disruption of Hong Kong’s supply chain was revealed to have impacted food purchasing habits during the pandemic. It brought about increased health and environmental awareness through the increased purchasing of healthier food choices, home food preparation and the increased usage of reusable bags. However, despite these shifts, the residents’ behavioural attitudes towards food wastage or the use of plastic bags and containers did not change. The original finding in this study seems to suggest that food wastage behaviour in Hong Kong is not influenced by external drivers, such as strict COVID-19 containment measures, nor is it affected by increased environmental awareness. Food-waste management strategies aimed at reducing food wastage at the consumer level of the food supply chain should, therefore, focus on targeting engrained behavioural habits and not simply raising awareness on the matter. Our aim is to investigate whether pandemic restrictions have led to a shift towards less-frequent food purchases in larger quantities and how such changes may affect food wastage generation. Survey data were collected from 253 Hong Kong residents. The study mainly adopted various quantitative research methods, including descriptive statistics, reliability tests, t-tests, ANOVA, and non-response bias. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 28 was used to investigate the useable data gathered from the respondents of this study. Results suggested that Hong Kong residents preferred supermarket and online food purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic to their usual offline/wet market purchasing habits before the pandemic. Also, the food purchasing rate was principally self-reported as infrequent and at high volumes during the COVID-19 pandemic. While an increased preference for home-prepared meals took precedence over consuming meals at restaurants, no significant change in food wastage habits was observed due to pandemic measures. Interestingly, although an increasing usage of reusable bags was observed, resident behaviour toward plastic bag usage was not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic containment measures.