Abstract Food loss and food waste extensively contribute to environmental degradation. Children waste large quantities of food and more research is required to better understand this problem and consequently to reduce food waste in the youngest generation. Here, we examined affective and behavioral components of attitudes towards food-wasting in a group of 670 children and 123 adults, aged 3–28. The participants viewed food wasting and food saving in a video, and we tested whether age affected the moral-emotional and behavioral reactions to a food wasting vs. food saving person. The attitude towards the food wasting protagonist (operationalized as “liking” indicated on a pictorial scale) was significantly more negative than that towards the food saving protagonist in all age groups except for the three- to five-year old children. Behavioral attitude towards the video protagonists was defined as a willingness to share some goods with a food wasting vs. a food saving person, and in our study, food wasting protagonist received equal amount or less resources distributed by the participants. Additionally, our data suggest that food wasting preferentially affected food sharing in adults, but not in children, as food was shared with the food wasting protagonist in significantly smaller quantities than pens by the oldest age group. In summary, we show that even preschoolers disapprove of food wasting behavior, but only in 6–7 year old children this attitude begins to become well established; it consolidates at the age of 8–9 and starts to include a behavioral component at the age of 10–12. We suggest that pro-environmental interventions targeting food waste reduction in children should start at middle childhood and focus on behavior.

中文翻译：

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五岁以上儿童不赞成浪费食物：一项关于儿童和成人食物浪费行为态度的实验研究

摘要 食物损失和食物浪费广泛导致环境退化。儿童浪费大量食物，需要进行更多研究以更好地了解这个问题，从而减少最年轻一代的食物浪费。在这里，我们研究了 670 名 3-28 岁儿童和 123 名成人对食物浪费态度的情感和行为成分。参与者在视频中观看了食物浪费和食物节约，我们测试了年龄是否会影响对食物浪费与节约食物的人的道德情感和行为反应。除了三到五岁的儿童外，所有年龄段的人对食物浪费主角的态度（操作为“喜欢”在图形尺度上表示“喜欢”）明显比对食物节省主角的态度更消极。对视频主角的行为态度被定义为愿意与浪费食物的人和节省食物的人分享一些商品，并且在我们的研究中，食物浪费的主角获得了由参与者分配的等量或更少的资源。此外，我们的数据表明，食物浪费优先影响成人的食物分享，而不是儿童的食物分享，因为与食物浪费的主角分享食物的数量明显少于最年长年龄组的钢笔。总之，我们表明，即使是学龄前儿童也不赞成浪费食物的行为，但只有在 6-7 岁的儿童中，这种态度才开始形成；它在 8-9 岁时巩固，并在 10-12 岁时开始包括行为成分。