Marco Setti

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...

Model selection and averaging in the assessment of the drivers of household food waste to reduce the probability of false positives

Food waste from households contributes the greatest proportion to total food waste in developed countries. Therefore, food waste reduction requires an understanding of the socio-economic (contextual and behavioural) factors that lead to its generation within the household. Addressing such a complex subject calls for sound methodological approaches that until now have been conditioned by the large number of factors involved in waste generation, by the lack of a recognised definition, and by limited available data. This work contributes to food waste generation literature by using one of the largest available datasets that includes data on the objective amount of avoidable household food waste, along with information on a series of socio-economic factors. In order to address one aspect of the complexity of the problem, machine learning algorithms (random forests and boruta) for variable selection integrated with linear modelling, model selection and averaging are implemented. Model selection addresses model structural uncertainty, which is not routinely considered in assessments of food waste in literature. The main drivers of food waste in the home selected in the most parsimonious models include household size, the presence of fussy eaters, employment status, home ownership status, and the local authority. Results, regardless of which variable set the models are run on, point toward large households as being a key target element for food waste reduction interventions.

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.

Energy Sustainability Issues in Agriculture: Lessons from Developed and Developing Countries

In the past 50 years the agricultural sector worldwide has gradually changed its production technologies, market relevance, and energy consumption and has been playing varied societal and economic roles. In particular, the shift from extensive to intensive agriculture, although meeting only a fraction of the global food demand, has sharply increased the energy footprint of food production worsening the global and local environmental problems and increasing fossil energy dependence. The study evaluates the life cycle energy intensity of selected agricultural systems in the world, characterized by a different relative contribution of the agricultural sector to the national economy. The assessment points out, quantifies and compares the different performances of national agriculture sectors. By monitoring and evaluating these performances over time, the study provides comprehensive information on the efficiency and effectiveness of energy use over the entire production chain in terms of yield (energy investment/product mass; energy investment/energy content), power density (energy/cropped land), and economic productivity (energy/economic production value). Results help in decision-making process at all levels to identify crucial aspects where inefficiency or inappropriate resource use takes place.

An Agent-Based Model for the Analysis of the Energy Sources Diffusion Dynamics

A novel model devoted to the characterization of the diffusion dynamics of three energy sources, traditional, bioenergy-like and solar-like, in a socio-economic energy system composed of general industries is presented. During the simulation each industry defines its strategy about the implementation of new technologies for the procurement of the energy needed to fulfill its internal activities. The research focuses on two different socio-economic energy systems descriptions: the first description is characterized by industries operating only by means of economic assessments, while in the second case imitation phenomena are introduced so that industries define their strategies not only by cost-benefits analysis but observing the behavior of the neighborhood as well.