Effects of Date Labels and Freshness Indicators on Food Waste Patterns in the United States and the United Kingdom
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Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
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Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics, KEDGE Business School, 33000 Bordeaux, France
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School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Felicitas Schneider, Stefan Lange and Thomas Schmidt
Sustainability 2021, 13(14), 7897; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147897
Received: 23 June 2021
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Revised: 13 July 2021
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Accepted: 14 July 2021
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Published: 15 July 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue National Food Loss and Waste Prevention Strategies and Monitoring Approaches—an Interdisciplinary Challenge for Decision Makers, Researchers and Practice)
To meet the target for Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, household food waste will need to be reduced by at least 284 million tonnes globally by 2030. American and British households waste a significant amount of food, and date labels are considered to be a contributor to this situation. Using a split-plot experimental design implemented on a survey administered to a convenience sample of UK and US consumers, we aimed to determine how different types of date labels and freshness indicators affect the stated likelihoods of discarding 15 foods. We find that not all date labels would lead to reductions in waste, and that semantics matter. Overall, the likelihood to waste across products was similar between the US and the UK; however, American consumers showed a larger response to the additional information provided by the freshness indicators. Our results shed new light on the ongoing policy debate related to national strategies for simplifying and harmonizing the use of date labels for packaged foods, as well as the potential effects from the use of freshness indicators.
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Keywords:
consumer behavior; cross-country comparison; date labels; food waste
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MDPI and ACS Style
Weis, C.; Narang, A.; Rickard, B.; Souza-Monteiro, D.M. Effects of Date Labels and Freshness Indicators on Food Waste Patterns in the United States and the United Kingdom. Sustainability 2021, 13, 7897. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147897
AMA Style
Weis C, Narang A, Rickard B, Souza-Monteiro DM. Effects of Date Labels and Freshness Indicators on Food Waste Patterns in the United States and the United Kingdom. Sustainability. 2021; 13(14):7897. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147897
Chicago/Turabian StyleWeis, Carter, Anjali Narang, Bradley Rickard, and Diogo M. Souza-Monteiro. 2021. "Effects of Date Labels and Freshness Indicators on Food Waste Patterns in the United States and the United Kingdom" Sustainability 13, no. 14: 7897. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147897
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