Consumer Choice and Food Waste: A Demand-Side Perspective to Address the Challenge of Sustainable Consumption Models

In recent years a growing number of studies and contributions have been developed on the analysis of food losses and waste along the entire Food Supply Chain. Due to the importance and seriousness, this phenomenon has reached international level. In industrialized countries, the largest share of waste occurs in the final phases of the food chain and especially in the consumption phase in which wastage of food is mainly related to behavioral issues, such as wasteful behavior and/or bad habits and practices at home and out-of-home. The purpose of this paper is to investigate—from the demand side—consumers’ choice in terms of wasted (edible and not consumed) food at domestic level. Through the data collected on a sample of consumers in Italy, the paper aims at: i) examining types of food most wasted at household level, according to socio-economic characteristics of families; ii) evaluating, by using the Working–Leser demand approach, if and to what extent propensity and responsiveness of wasting food vary according to both expenditure and price levels. The estimates of demand elasticities for commodity groups and household characteristics can help to plan interventions aimed at addressing initiatives to selected categories of consumers, thus contributing to minimize food waste, to implement sustainable consumption models and therefore to ultimately reduce food waste related impacts