Eighth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Global climate change and its impacts on agriculture are prominent subjects ought to be tackled meticulously as growing global population has been putting more stress on them. As Godfray et al. (2011) highlight that feeding 9 billion people is a great challenge which human beings have to be faced with. At this point, food waste issue stands out. Food waste and sustainability in food consumption have recently become one of the hot topics in international arena. Although food waste prevention seems to be one of the most efficient ways to overcome food waste problem and to tackle the challenge of feeding 9 billion people, there is rather little knowledge about consumer behavior towards food waste issue as the consumption level food waste is the most important phase along the whole food supply chain. Hence, defining factors affecting consumer food waste behavior is a promising field of research. The objective of this study is to find out what drives university students to leave food they are served in university cafeterias or canteens, and factors influencing their decisions to do so. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is used in this study and situational variables such as personal norms, portion size, taste, time pressure, and value for money are added to the classical TPB model. The model will be empirically tested with survey data collected from students in METU. Then, CFA and SEM will be conducted to test validity and reliability of the model as well as to test conceptual model.