MEAL: Model of Empathy Augmented Logistics for Food Security

Millions globally lack reliable access to nutritious food. Efforts to address food insecurity seek to provide consumers food that may be rescued (i.e., what warehouses or grocers would otherwise soon discard as unusable), directly donated, or acquired using governmental funds. Current approaches produce allocations that optimize global objectives to store and move food efficiently in the network. However, they largely overlook consumer preferences and constraints. As a result, the resulting allocations lead to consumers either using foods they don’t care for or discarding such foods, leading to food waste. This article presents a new model, evaluated via human study and agent-based simulation, that shows how to combine the consumer and provider perspectives. We find that persuasive messages that include individual circumstances and the social context can promote prosociality and empathy, leading to improved outcomes overall.