Motivation to Avoid Food Waste Scale

What it measures

A 21-item multidimensional scale measuring consumers' motivations to avoid food waste across four conceptually distinct dimensions: environmental (concerns about food waste's impact on the natural world), moral (guilt and ethical concerns relating to food scarcity and waste), financial (concern about the monetary cost of discarded food), and social (anxiety about how others perceive one's food waste behaviour). Developed through a three-study program combining qualitative item generation with UK consumer samples, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, test–retest reliability assessment, and predictive validity testing in both UK and USA samples. The scale is explicitly formative at the top level — the four subscales should not be combined into a single composite score — while each subscale is a reflective construct. Designed to segment consumers by motivation type and to evaluate the effectiveness of food waste reduction interventions.

Response format

7-point scale (1 = Not at all, 7 = Very much); stem: 'To what extent do you personally avoid wasting food because of the following reasons:'

Scale items

Environmental

• Food waste leads to excess pollution caused by the production, distribution and disposal of food.
• Wasting food leads to overproduction that damages our environment.
• Wasting food is a waste of the energy and labor that went into the production of it.
• I try to avoid food waste because of the environmental impact of food packaging.
• Food waste has huge economic consequences for society.
• Food waste is not fair because it depletes resources for future generations.
• When food is wasted, some animals suffered unnecessarily.

Moral

• Food waste is not acceptable because it can be avoided by saving and eating leftovers.
• Wasting food is unnecessary because the food can be reused, frozen or better portioned instead of wasted.
• I try to avoid food waste because food should not be taken for granted.
• Wasting food is disrespectful to poor people in this country.

Financial

• Wasting food is a shame because I could have saved the money.
• Wasting food worries me because I could have spent the money on other things.
• I try to avoid food waste because I worked hard to earn the money I paid the food with.
• Wasting food is a waste of my money.

Social

• I avoid food waste because I don't want other people to think I'm greedy.
• I don't want to waste food because I'm afraid other people will think that I'm ungrateful.
• I avoid wasting food because I'm afraid people will think I'm flaunting my wealth.
• I try not to waste food because otherwise people will think that I'm unable to run my household properly.
• I try to avoid food waste because I worry that people think that I'm a wasteful person.
• I refrain from wasting food because I fear that people think I don't care about food waste problems.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

The four dimensions are conceptually distinct but correlated (Pearson r = 0.25–0.63). The authors explicitly caution against aggregating all 21 items into a single composite — the scale is formative across dimensions but each subscale is reflective. In Study 1b, moral items showed negative factor loadings in the EFA due to rotation direction, not reverse-coding; all items are positively worded. The social motivation dimension (M = 2.96) was substantially lower than environmental (M = 5.16), moral (M = 5.61), and financial (M = 5.61) motivations, though social motivations may be particularly activated in public food-consumption contexts. Test–retest reliability (8-week interval): environmental ICC = 0.70, moral ICC = 0.70, social ICC = 0.66, financial ICC = 0.58. Nomological correlates: environmental dimension with GREEN scale (r = 0.71); financial dimension with frugality (r = 0.58); social dimension with concern-about-what-others-think (r = 0.55); moral dimension with guilt-proneness/TOSCA (r = 0.46). Social desirability bias was only weakly associated with the social subscale (r = 0.16); the other three dimensions showed no significant relationship with social desirability. Environmental and moral motivations were the strongest predictors of food waste avoidance intentions and leftover reuse behaviours in Study 3.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Ribbers, D., Geuens, M., Pandelaere, M., & van Herpen, E. (2023). Development and validation of the motivation to avoid food waste scale. Global Environmental Change, 78, 102626.

Keywords