No waste like home: How the good provider identity drives excessive purchasing and household food waste

Food waste poses a significant global challenge, with approximately one-third of food produced for human consumption lost or wasted annually. This issue is also shaped by consumers’ behavior, habits, and attitudes, making them part of a potential solution to the problem. Although consumers express a desire to minimize food waste, they also struggle to translate this intention into action due to conflicting motives in food choice and provisioning. In this research, we focus on the tension between trying to avoid food waste versus being a good food provider for the family—providing all family members with plenty and varied foods. This research sheds light on food practices that drive the relationship between good provider identity and household food waste. In two studies, including a field study where actual curbside household food waste was collected, we show that the good provider identity is an important motivational driver of excessive purchasing that subsequently results in household food waste. Consumers who perceive themselves as good providers buy more food than their family needs, contributing to increased food waste. In the last study, we address this behavior and investigate whether an intervention that suggests swapping to smaller packages could help reduce purchase quantities among good providers. Overall, we conclude that food swap suggestions are an effective way to reduce food purchasing quantities, and that a food waste reduction message resonates equally well with consumers with high and low good provider identities. • The good provider identity promotes household food waste. • Excessive purchasing is the main culprit for good providers wasting food. • Messages suggesting consumers to switch to smaller package sizes reduce food-purchasing quantities. • Food waste reduction messages resonate equally well with consumers with high and low good provider identities.