Motivated to reduce food waste, unsure how: A qualitative study of household food waste behaviour

Food waste contributes significant environmental impact and reducing household food waste remains a key priority. Yet, complexity of behaviours involved in household food waste remains understudied. This study aims to understand barriers and drivers of households’ capability, opportunity and motivation to reduce food waste, in order to contribute to better and more targeted policy interventions. We use a combined inductive-deductive thematical analysis approach, drawing on two theoretical frameworks, the Capability-Opportunity-Motivation-Behavioural model (COM-B) with the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to analyse semi-structured interview data of 30 Swedish households. Findings suggest that all households report to actively engage in behaviours to reduce food waste; these can be everything from a shared grocery list or taking care of leftovers. However, households identify barriers in particular in regard to capability; their capability of reducing food waste and what the consequences of food waste reduction are, and opportunity; social influences to reduce food waste and environmental resources and context, for example, that time is a restricting factor to reduce food waste, on top of all other musts in their everyday life. This implies that policy interventions for reducing household food waste should hel them to overcome barriers of time constraints, provide them with social influences within and outside the household, and strengthen their behavioural regulation