TY  - JOUR
N1  - This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
AV  - public
VL  - 183
Y1  - 2021/05//
TI  - Community social capital and status: The social dilemma of food waste
A1  - Piras, S
A1  - Pancotto, F
A1  - Righi, S
A1  - Vittuari, M
A1  - Setti, M
JF  - Ecological Economics
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.106954
PB  - Elsevier BV
SN  - 0921-8009
N2  - In developed countries, the largest share of food is wasted at the household level. Household food waste results from a complex interaction between economic factors, well-established routines, and social norms. To explain this interaction, we propose a simple model of waste behavior where the individual and social economic costs generated by wasting are counterbalanced by the security and status generated through acquiring excess food, thus causing a social dilemma. This trade-off is mediated by social capital, which measures the intensity with which each individual within a community evaluates the negative effects of waste. We test this model's hypotheses using a 2016 dataset of food behaviors and opinions of Italian households, which we merge with variables known to elicit the local level of social capital. We find individual food waste levels to be negatively related with social capital. Contrastingly, status concerns with respect to food and the lack of organizational abilities are both more prevalent in low social capital areas, and are related to increased food waste. This relationship is mediated by income.
ID  - discovery10122433
ER  -