Piras, S;
Pancotto, F;
Righi, S;
Vittuari, M;
Setti, M;
(2021)
Community social capital and status: The social dilemma of food waste.
Ecological Economics
, 183
, Article 106954. 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.106954.
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Abstract
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.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Community social capital and status: The social dilemma of food waste |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.106954 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.106954 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | 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. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10122433 |
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