Motivating household food waste reduction: harnessing the power of message context and framing

Household food waste is a major contributor to the total food waste from all sectors globally. Food waste undermines sustainability and reduces the resilience of food systems. The current food waste statistics, especially in high-income economies, indicate a need to rethink how households can be motivated to reduce food waste. Generally, persuasive messages can be used to create positive behavior change. But there is yet to be explored potential to influence food waste behavior using messages. Thus, this paper employs behavioral insights to assess the effectiveness of message domains, contexts, and composition in encouraging households to reduce food waste. We find that message domains and composition influences the intent to reduce food waste. The odds of motivating food waste reduction are higher using the loss domain framed messages with financial outcomes, and the gain domain framed messages with environmental outcomes. Moreover, composite messages are more likely to encourage household food waste recycling behavior. The paper shows that improving behavioral change messages in terms of message appropriateness and clarity is pivotal to implementing an effective instrument.