Foodservice Composting Crowds Out Consumer Food Waste Reduction Behavior in a Dining Experiment

Many countries strive to reduce food waste, which deprives hungry people of nutrition, depletes resources, and accounts for substantial greenhouse gas emissions. Composting and other food waste recycling technologies that divert food waste from landfills mitigate the environmental damages of food waste disposal and have grown in popularity. We explore whether consumer knowledge that the environmental damage created by their food waste will be mitigated by recycling technologies undermines personal food waste reduction behavior. Subjects in a dining situation are randomly assigned whether or not they receive information about the negative effects of landfilling food waste and whether they are told that uneaten food from the study will be composted or landfilled. We find that providing information about the negative effects of food waste in landfills significantly reduces the total amount of solid food waste created when compared to a control situation that features neither a food waste reduction nor a food waste recycling policy. However, if subjects are also informed that food waste from the study will be composted, the amount of solid food waste generated is significantly greater than if only the food waste reduction policy were implemented. This suggests a crowding out effect or informational rebound effect in which promoting policies that mitigate the environmental damages of food waste may unintentionally undermine policies meant to encourage individual consumer food waste reduction. We discuss key policy implications as well as several limitations of our experimental setting and analysis.