How and Why the Collaborative Consumption of Food Leads to Overpurchasing, Overconsumption, and Waste

Abstract

Overconsuming and wasting food are disadvantageous for consumers and society as a whole and, therefore, are topics of great relevance. This research identifies food-based collaborative consumption (CC) as a hitherto unrecognized cause of overpurchasing, overconsuming, and wasting food. Food-based CC, which involves members of a group contributing to and taking from a collective pool of food, is a common social practice (e.g., potlucks) and a widely adopted format by the restaurant industry (e.g., family-style and tapas dining). A combination of interviews, behavioral studies, and online experiments show that consumers purchase significantly more food per person in CC (vs. personal-consumption) group contexts, resulting in overconsumption and waste. This is shown to be the result of both generosity motives and cognitive errors (specifically, failing to account for the reciprocal nature of CC). However, inflated purchase amounts in CC contexts can be reduced (i.e., consumer well-being can be improved) by (1) having consumers explicitly focus on the amount they expect to take from others and (2) providing antiwaste persuasive messages at the point of purchase.