The Contrast Pressures on Consumer-Level Food Waste in a Pandemic: The Impact of Infection Salience Versus Lockdown Salience

Abstract Consumer food waste, with its extensive social, economic, and environmental implications, gained heightened attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted food supply chains and exacerbated food insecurity. Amidst conflicting reports on the pandemic’s influences on consumer-level food waste, this research differentiates between the infection and lockdown facets of a pandemic. Specifically, we demonstrate that infection salience amplifies safety-health concerns, leading to increased consumer food waste, while lockdown salience raises concerns over resource scarcity, resulting in reduced consumer food waste. Considering most pandemics or infectious diseases primarily increase infection salience without inducing lockdowns, we propose a safety-health intervention to mitigate the rise in consumer food waste driven by infection salience and the associated safety-health concerns. Through a large-scale field study, a lab experiment measuring real food waste, a country-level secondary dataset, and three supplementary experiments, we provide converging supports for our theory. These studies also showcase various implementations of the safety-health intervention, such as table tents, napkins, and to-go boxes. This research reconciles divergent perspectives on the pandemic’s impact on consumer-level food waste, enriches the understanding of pandemics and associated food waste dynamics, and offers actionable strategies for businesses and policymakers to address consumer food waste during pandemics.