Study on consumer behavior towards food waste in Azerbaijan

Introduction.The aim of this study was to investigate consumer behavior towards food waste in Azerbaijan.Materials and methods.455 people were determined in accordance with the criteria suggested by Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2018) and can represent the universe with a 95% confidence interval and a 5% margin of error.The relationships between food waste and its determinants were analyzed by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) method.Results and discussion.According to the structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis, only the variable "food characteristics" was found to have a significant effect on the amount of food waste ( = 0.137, p = 0.005).All other variablesfood quantity ( = -0.061,p = 0.498), durability ( = -0.014,p = 0.791), frequency of purchase ( = -0.066,p = 0. 158), peeling habits ( = -0.090,p = 0.101), purchase method ( = 0.035, p = 0.642) and price ( = 0.016, p = 0.749) -were not statistically significant.Furthermore, no significant relationship was observed between food waste attitudes and the amount of waste ( = -0.142,p = 0.213).Of the 455 participants in the study, 77% were female and 91% were between the ages of 18-24.58% of the participants are high school graduates and 32% are undergraduate graduates.43% of the households consisted of five or more people.When analyzing the responses to the question about the amount of food waste, 46% of respondents said that they throw away less than 5%, and 27% of respondents said that they throw away 6-15%.These results show that consumers in Azerbaijan have a low level of awareness about food waste and that waste is mostly due to the physical characteristics of food (freshness, appearance, and flavor).Other economic or behavioral factors were not found to be statistically effective.Thus, Azerbaijani consumers often throw away food products depending on their properties, as they do not care about reducing food waste in their country.Changing consumer behavior is one of the key areas to reduce overall food waste. Conclusion.The results of the study allow raising consumer awareness about food waste and give grounds to believe that it is necessary to improve consumption planning by both consumers and the food sector in Azerbaijan.