Improving Effectiveness of Food Waste Prevention Messages: An Abstract

Abstract

Many initiatives are now attempting to reduce consumer food waste around the globe by creating awareness about food waste. In the EU alone more than 100 programs and policies against food waste were developed (Monier et al. 2011). This study intends to help designing effective food waste prevention campaign communications. For this purpose, different message appeals with varying motives and frames will be compared for their persuasiveness. Specifically, the effects of motive appeal and regulatory focus of food waste prevention messages on perceived argument quality, attitudes towards the message and issue attitude will be analyzed. An experimental study examined effects of ads promoting different motives to reduce food waste on consumer responses. Moreover, the impact of regulatory focus of the message conveyed in the ad on consumer evaluations of the ad was investigated. Therefore, a 2 (message motive: financial versus moral) × 2 (regulatory focus of the message: promotion versus prevention) between-subjects design was employed. The sample consisted of one hundred and fifty-two graduate and undergraduate students. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups and asked to evaluate one of four types of ads. Half of the ads promoted food waste reduction by addressing the financial motives, namely monetary consequences of wasting food while the other half addressed the ethical motives, namely moral consequences of “doing the right thing”. Moreover, half of the ads employed a promotion focus, which emphasizes the gains of not wasting food whereas the other half employed a prevention focus, which highlights the losses incurred as a result of food waste. The results of the analysis presented no significant differences in consumer responses between messages conveying a financial or a moral motive to avoid food waste. Consumers perceived saving money and salving conscience as equally important. On the other hand, regarding the regulatory focus of the ads, consumer responses differ significantly. When the losses of food waste are emphasized with a prevention focused message consumers’ issue attitude, perceived argument quality and attitude toward the ad were more favorable compared to when the gains of avoiding food waste are emphasized with a promotion focused ad. Consequently, it can be deduced that effectiveness of food waste prevention campaigns can be improved by employing prevention focused messages. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.