What is the effect of supermarket managers’ behavior on food waste?

Abstract

Despite a significant percentage of the world population facing chronic hunger, close to one-third of the food produced within a food supply chain is wasted annually. Predominately visible food waste occurs during harvesting, transportation, and consumption stages. Therefore, the supermarket sector, which contributes to a substantial amount of food waste, remains under-explored in academic research areas. This study employs a quantitative approach, grounded in the theory of planned behavior. The study investigates how food waste behavior is influenced within supermarkets by attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and situational factors. Additionally, the study explores the mediating role of intention within this context. The data were collected from 136 supermarket managers using the survey method and to analyze data multiple regression analysis was employed. The results indicate that Positive attitudes, favorable perceived behavioral control, and favorable intentions are the factors that positively significantly effect on food waste-reducing behavior of supermarket managers. Furthermore, the intention has a mediation effect between the independent variables and the dependent variable (food waste-reducing behavior). Moreover, the study concludes that the attitudes of managers are having a more substantial impact on food waste-reducing behavior rather than perceived behavioral control. The study findings assist top-level management of the supermarkets to identify the critical areas that need to be addressed to reduce food wastage in supermarkets and drive them to make more accurate decisions to minimize food wastage in supermarkets.