One of the ways to reduce household food waste is to augment consumers' decision-making ability to more accurately judge when to dispose of edible food items. To encourage more efficient disposition decisions, it is necessary to understand the basis of these decisions in everyday life. However, there are few studies of consumer information processing in disposition decisions addressing questions such as how consumers examine food attributes. I provided a framework based on the consumer information processing model and the concept of decision strategies. Using this framework and the think-aloud protocol, I collected data on consumers' household disposition behavior and analyzed them.
The results highlight four dynamics of disposition decisions. First, people usually examine only a few attributes, and employ simplified decision strategies. Following this, it is not useful to display detailed information on food packages to encourage specific disposition decisions. Second, people tend to keep as many food items as possible, and only when the need for disposal arises, do they justify their decision with new reasons. This means that people feel guilty when they dispose of food items. Third, people often examine expiry labels or storage periods and use these as their primary reference point. Clearly, this type of information plays an important role in disposition decisions. Fourth, people often build upon the expiry date reference by using their knowledge of the properties of each food item. In general, these dynamics suggest that if consumers have better knowledge of a wider range of food items, they can leverage this information to more efficiently judge the optimal disposition timing and necessity.

View full abstract