FoodWaste

Organic fruits and vegetables are often visually “suboptimal” because organic farming uses neither pesticides nor synthetic fertilisers to improve the cosmetic appearance of the produce. Despite the organic sector's natural and sustainable image, such foods often never reach the market or are left on the shelf, greatly increasing food waste. The current work hypothesised that an important factor in the rejection of suboptimal food is consumers' experience of ambivalence regarding these products. Data were collected through an online survey of (occasional) organic consumers in Germany (n = 493), including an online mouse-tracking experiment. We investigated the interplay of ambivalence with environmental concerns and attitudes towards suboptimal food that influence people's willingness to pay (WTP) for suboptimal fruits and vegetables. Our findings suggest that environmentally concerned consumers have more favourable attitudes and experience less ambivalence towards suboptimal food. Only subjective ambivalence was found to be directly associated with consumers' WTP, however, while attitudes were not. Based on these results, we propose measures for policymakers and food retailers to reduce such ambivalence and thus increase organic consumers' acceptance for suboptimal food.

Food waste is the origin of major social and environmental issues. In industrial societies, domestic households are the biggest contributors to this problem. But why do people waste food although they buy and value it? Answering this question is mandatory to design effective interventions against food waste. So far, however, many interventions have not been based on theoretical knowledge. Integrating food waste literature and ambivalence research, we propose that domestic food waste can be understood via the concept of ambivalence—the simultaneous presence of positive and negative associations towards the same attitude object. In support of this notion, we demonstrated in three pre-registered experiments that people experienced ambivalence towards non-perishable food products with expired best before dates. The experience of ambivalence was in turn associated with an increased willingness to waste food. However, two informational interventions aiming to prevent people from experiencing ambivalence did not work as intended (Experiment 3). We hope that the outlined conceptualization inspires theory-driven research on why and when people dispose of food and on how to design effective interventions.