Food Waste Behaviour: A Cross-country Study

Food choices are influenced by personal, cultural, and religious factors influence food choices. Within the EATMOT project, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 11919 voluntary adult participants residing in 16 countries to investigate how people relate to food waste, their attitudes, and how these vary across socio-demographic groups. The questionnaire was translated into local languages, and non-probabilistic methods selected the sample. Descriptive statistics tools were used to at the 5% significance level. The decision tree method (Classification and Regression Trees) identified the best predictors, which split the samples into clusters. Statistically significant differences were found between groups for all socio-demographic variables related to avoiding food waste when cooking at home. Similar differences emerged for choosing local foods and preferring restaurants that promote strategies to minimize food waste. The tree classification analysis revealed that, for all three items studied, the variable country, characterized by different cultures, was the most important discriminating factor. This work highlighted that people from different countries and socio-demographic groups as defined by established cut-offs for each characteristic.