Why Instrumental and Consummatory Motivators Matter: A Goal-Framing and Motivation–Opportunity–Ability Explanation of Household Food Waste Behaviour

Halving food waste at the consumer level by 2030 is an explicit objective of the Sustainable Development Goals, making household food waste behaviour a priority for research and policy. Despite widespread interest in food waste research, the motives behind waste avoidance have received limited attention. This quantitative study examines two motivators, instrumental and consummatory, within a multi-theory framework to investigate household food waste behaviour. The Motivation–Opportunity–Ability (MOA) framework and extended Goal-Framing Theory (GFT) were applied, and the two motivators were measured with thinking style items from the Situation-Specific Thinking Style (SSTS) Scale, which captured processing style and were treated as unvalidated motive proxies. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was employed to analyse survey data (n = 583; 548 valid) from Turkish households, collected through social media using convenience and snowball sampling. Food waste was measured as a self-reported, categorical indicator of the proportion of acquired food discarded, recorded in ordered percentage bands. Instrumental and consummatory motives were positioned as exogenous predictors of awareness, attitude, social norms, intention, opportunity, and ability (perceived difficulty—PD), as specified by the MOA framework; and the three goal orientations (gain, hedonic, normative) specified by an extended GFT, which were in turn specified to relate to food waste through four household food management behaviours: planning, shopping, having food knowledge, and serving. The findings reveal a pronounced asymmetry between the two motivators. The instrumental motivator was significantly associated with every mediator examined and negatively indirectly related to food waste. The consummatory motivator was related to only four mediating constructs (normative goals, ability (PD), opportunity, shopping) and showed no significant association with food waste. Shopping was the only behaviour positively associated with waste, while serving and food knowledge were negatively associated with it; the association for planning did not reach significance. Because the design is cross-sectional, the findings indicate associations rather than causal mechanisms or intervention effectiveness. The study offers a motive-based account of household food waste that links goal-directed reasoning to everyday food behaviours.