A
study has evaluated three types of media campaign conducted by a large
UK supermarket to encourage shoppers to reduce their food waste. These
used social media, an e-newsletter and a print/digital magazine,
respectively. Although they all appeared to lead to reductions in food
waste to some extent, similar behavioural changes were also seen for
customers who had not participated in any of the campaigns.
Vast
quantities of food are wasted on a global scale each year. Throwing
away food also wastes the resources used to produce it and pushes up
food prices. In addition, this loss harms the environment —
deforestation, for example, has been partly linked with creating
agricultural land for growing food that is subsequently wasted.
Furthermore, food that is disposed of in landfill emits methane and
carbon dioxide. Reducing food waste is, therefore, a crucial part of
moving towards a sustainable society. The EU, for example, is committed
to reducing food waste as part of its drive towards a circular economy1.
Behaviour
change research has found that face-to-face influence, where people
learn from one another — for instance, showing your neighbours how to
compost, can be very powerful. Some researchers have suggested that
social media could encourage behaviour change in the same way as
face-to-face contact, potentially influencing large numbers of people in
a cost-effective manner.
This
study explored whether social media could be used to help consumers at a
large UK retailer reduce their food waste. The researchers worked
closely with the store’s organisation to design three one-off
interventions with messages to reduce food waste, using the store’s
communication channels.
For
the first intervention, a feature article containing expert tips for
reducing the most commonly wasted food at home was published in one
issue of the store’s magazine. Every month, the magazine is circulated
to 1.9 million readers and is available in-store or online. The article
included advice on how to store food and use up leftovers in appetising
ways.
For
the second intervention, two feature articles were published in the
store’s e-newsletter, which is distributed to 1.4 million customers. One
feature discussed household food waste and how to use leftovers. There
was also a link to a social media campaign, which encouraged customers
to share ideas for reducing food waste. The second feature advised
consumers on how to store food and keep it fresh.
The
third intervention posted a campaign on leftovers on the store's
Facebook page. Customers were encouraged to interact by sending in their
favourite recipes using leftover food and also to go to a separate
website which gives advice on how to reduce food waste.
The
researchers then assessed whether the campaigns changed consumer
behaviour using an online questionnaire. In all, 2018 customers
completed the questionnaire, which asked about how often they threw away
food, and how much. Participants filled in the questionnaire three
times: one month before the interventions, two weeks after the
interventions and five months after the interventions. For comparison,
the researchers also questioned a control group of customers who had not
seen any of the intervention campaigns.
The
researchers found there was a significant reduction in the quantity of
food wasted by participants five months after both the e-newsletter and
Facebook initiatives finished, compared with the amount of food wasted
before either initiative.
For
magazine readers, there was a small but insignificant fall in food
wasted five months after the campaign, compared with before the
campaign. This, say the researchers, suggests that the magazine did not
significantly change consumer behaviour.
Surprisingly,
however, the consumers who had not seen any of the campaigns also
significantly reduced the amount of food they wasted at the end of the
five month period. The researchers have suggested that this might be a
result of consumers being subliminally influenced by similar
interventions, which happened in wider marketing promotions. They have
collected more data and are researching this idea further.
One
implication of this study is that social media may not be able to
influence behaviour change in the same way that face-to-face social
interactions have been reported to do so, given that the social media
participants performed no better than the control group. The researchers
suggest that this might be because the message to reduce food waste
conflicts with typical social media topics which encourage consumers to
buy more from retailers.
Therefore,
an area for further work is how to capture the face-to-face experience
in behaviour change interventions that could allow retailers to
influence millions of consumers.
One
of the benefits of this study was that behaviour change interventions
were tested on consumers in real-life, as opposed to laboratory
settings. In daily life, numerous distractions compete for people's
attention, which may explain why laboratory studies, with no
distractions, have previously found social media campaigns to be
effective in encouraging behaviour change.
Although
the study relied on self-reported surveys, the researchers suggest that
the surveys themselves were unlikely to have caused the reported food
waste reductions, since there were a large number of participants in the
study from a range of different backgrounds.
The
researchers suggest that the scale of behaviour change needed to reduce
food waste may ultimately require initiatives from the food industry,
or from government, rather than from individual companies.
1. Closing the loop - An EU action plan for the Circular Economy. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri= CELEX:52015DC0614
Source: Young,
W., Russell, S.V., Robinson, C.A. & Barkemeyer, R. (2017). Can
social media be a tool for reducing consumers’ food waste? A behaviour
change experiment by a UK retailer. Resources, Conservation and Recycling. 117 (B): 195–203. DOI:10.1016/j.resconrec.2016. 10.016. This study is free to view at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ science/article/pii/ S0921344916303160.
Contact: c.w.young@leeds.ac.uk
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