Andrea Segrè

Italian consumers’ income and food waste behavior

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide insights on the relationships between consumers’ income and household food waste behaviors. Design/methodology/approach – Attitude toward food waste is a paradigmatic (economic) non-standard decision making. Based on behavioral economics concepts and empirical evidences, the study analyzes the frequency of household food waste and its main drivers with a focus on individual income. Through a panel of 1,403 Italian consumers, food waste behavior and its determinants are modeled for five food typologies using proportional odds models that adopt stepwise procedures and genetic algorithms. Findings – Results suggest the existence of complex relationships between per capita income and household food waste behavior. When considering food typologies that include high value added products, this relation can be explained by an inverse U-shaped curve: mid-to-low income consumers purchase higher amounts of lower quality products and waste more food. Research limitati...

Green Approaches to Enhancing Rural Communities in Romania: Case Studies from Maramureş and Sibiu Counties

The concept of development evolves following the transformations and new challenges communities have to face. In this framework, in the past twenty years, development discourse has covered questions about the interrelations among its different dimensions (economic, human, social, environmental, institutional), about the transition from linear to circular models, and about the role (and importance) of endogenous resources. This evolution has increased the attention given to local development strategies and their role in the promotion of sustainability and socio-economic growth by recognizing and reorganizing local resources.This article grounds the concept of territorial capital to Maramures County (Romania) with the aim of understanding its role and of assessing its potential as a driving force to guide local communities in the exploitation of endogenous resources. Through a comparative analysis of the case studies of the Tâvarna Mare Natura 2000 site (Sibiu County) and Oas Gutai (Maramures County), the work also aims to provide general insights to inform local development policies.The research is based on multiple research methods including secondary data analysis, a survey, and a set of interviews with local stakeholders and rural development experts, and it is developed through a comparative analysis between the case studies.

Consumer approach to food waste: evidences from a large scale survey in Italy

In the EU 89 million tons of food are wasted every year, the largest fraction of which at the household level. Despite the key role of consumers in waste production, their approach to food waste has not been deeply analyzed so far. This paper aims at exploring the consumer attitude towards food waste, by analyzing the results of a survey held in two Italian cities in 2014, focused on the extent and reasons of the household food waste, and on consumers’ perception of effects and possible remedies to food waste. The results highlighted a general awareness of the effects of food waste, although the perception of such effects was more developed when they directly concerned the consumers. The main reasons of food waste declared by the respondents were the mismanagement of expiration dates, over-purchase, over-cooking, and a lack of knowledge about how to reuse the leftovers. A cluster analysis was conducted to identify consumer profiles with a similar approach to food waste. Such profiles were then analyzed across the two samples in order to check for possible overlapping, which could lead to a careful generalization of the results. Namely, we found 4 consumer profiles, named as “careful”, “virtuous”, “aware” and “unconcerned”, in both the samples analysed. Despite the many limitations of this very first analysis on household food waste, some interesting insights emerge, which might be usefully deepened in order to design effective strategies against food waste.

Virtual Water in Diet, Shopping and Food Waste

Food is the central pillar for the life of humankind; food is also an important element of our history and culture. In addition, food is an essential part of the environment and the places it originates from. Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, a German philosopher, in one of his famous aphorism, expressed the idea that “We are what we eat”. If this concept is to be still considered valid, this means that the path we are undertaking is rather dramatic. In order to demonstrate that, it will be sufficient to articulate just a couple of considerations. The first is that, in Europe, 43 % of food waste is domestic waste. The second is that food is gradually becoming simply a commodity, that is, a good which must be traded at the lowest price, losing not only its economic value but also its nutritional, cultural, social and historical values.