Communication of food waste messages: The effects of communication modality, presentation order, and mindfulness on food waste reduction intention

Highlights

• This study investigates how persuasive communication can influence customers to participate in food waste reduction.

• This study used a mix-method approach to explore how customers process food waste communication at foodservice operations.

• A significant three-way interaction effects was found on customers’ intention to support food waste reduction efforts.

• High mindfulness people support food waste reduction policy regardless of communication modality and presentation order.

• Low mindfulness people show greater intention to support sustainable efforts when receiving written message before meals.

Abstract

This study investigates how businesses can persuade customers to participate in food waste reduction efforts by using communication strategies. Grounded in information processing and persuasion theories, we conducted two studies. In study 1, a focus group interview was performed to explore how customers process food waste communication from foodservice operations. In study 2, a 2 (communication modality: written vs. verbal) × 2 (presentation order: before meals vs. during meals) × 2 (mindfulness: low vs. high) between-subjects design quasi experiment was conducted to examine these interaction effects on customers’ intention to support the restaurants’ food waste reduction efforts. The findings are consistent across the two studies. The findings indicate that people with low mindfulness have lower intention to participate when the message is delivered verbally (vs. written) and the message is prompted before meals (vs. during meals). Conversely, people with high mindfulness tend to have higher intention to participate regardless of communication modality and presentation order.

Introduction

Food waste is a serious global problem. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UNFAO), about 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted globally every year, resulting in $1 trillion, $700 billion, and $900 billion in economic, environmental, and social costs, respectively (Legendre et al., 2020b, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [UNFAO], 2019). In the United States (US), approximately 40% of food is either lost or wasted, amounting to $165 billion every year, or $1600 per family/year. This equates to 219 lbs. of food thrown away per person/year (RTS, 2020). US foodservice operations are estimated to be responsible for about $86 billion, and a significant proportion of food waste occurs at the customer level (Principato et al., 2018). At a business level, the US Environmental Production Agency (EPA, 2020) has some guidelines for food production and service companies (e.g., audit). However, these plans do not specifically propose how to involve customers; thus, many businesses stay passive in terms of involving their customers in the food waste reduction.

In the hospitality literature, food waste is defined as “food that is unwanted and disposed of, such as leftovers from guest plates and peels from meal preparation that occur during cooking” (Filimonau and De Coteau, 2019, p. 237). Notable efforts have been made to investigate how to nudge customers to be part of businesses’ environmental endeavors, including food waste reduction (Kallbekken and Sælen, 2013). For example, Zhang et al. (2020) examine the effects of regulatory focus and reference points, while Dolnicar et al. (2020) show the effects of flyers and stamp collection booklets on customers intentions to support food waste reduction. Although these findings inform businesses about what messages to communicate to customers, they do not answer the question of how to effectively communicate these messages. The theories around information processing explain that the methods of communication, such as communication modality (e.g., written vs. verbal) and presentation order (before vs. after) (Unnava et al., 1994), are pivotal to attention and memory functions. Moreover, in real life, businesses and customers communicate via various channels (Berger and Iyengar, 2013). Intuitively, these factors should also be considered to fully understand the effect of persuasive messages on human behavior. However, only scant research outcomes could be found.

The lack of investigation regarding the methods of communication causes several problems in terms of understanding and predicting customers’ intention to support businesses’ food waste reduction efforts. First, the communication modality determines the way customers communicate, especially with regard to the contents of communication and the level of customers’ interest in the subject matter. Due to the lack of research on communication modality, earlier studies have shown inconsistent effects of written and verbal communication. Some research advocates that written communication is more effective than verbal communication in triggering customers’ interests in the topic (Berger and Iyengar, 2013), while others argue that auditory or visual communication has more enhanced persuasive effects than written communication (Chaiken and Eagly, 1976). Second, Unnava et al. (1994) find reasons for inconsistent communication modality effects in message presentation order (before vs. after), and many supporting rationalizations are made (Lu et al., 2019, Oppewal et al., 2015). However, even the outcomes of these studies do not provide consistent results across different dependent variables (e.g., argument favorability) and moderators. Third, customers’ proneness to pay attention to food waste communication is based on customers’ level of mindfulness (Ndubisi, 2014, Ruedy and Schweitzer, 2010). The previous literature, albeit limitedly, examines the effects of personality-like variables in exploring food waste message delivery and persuasion. However, these investigations are bounded by the influences of individuals’ environmental concerns, rather than holistically explaining how personality-like variables, such as mindfulness, influence the psychological process of food waste message processing (Barber and Deale, 2014).

To fill these literature gaps, this study nests its argument within the information processing and persuasion literature. The overall goal of this research is to investigate the effects of communication methods on the processing of food waste messaging provided by foodservice businesses. Since there has been a lack of literature related to the methods of communication, this study first pursues a qualitative approach to understand the overall process of food waste message communication. This procedure makes it possible to identify the factors influencing food waste message communication and potential consequences (study 1). From the findings of the first study, this research conducts a follow-up quantitative study with a 2 (communication modality: written vs. verbal) × 2 (presentation order: before meals vs. during meals) × 2 (mindfulness: low vs. high) between-subjects design quasi experiment. Additionally, significantly lacking hospitality literature controls for social desirability bias when investigating customers’ sustainability intention and behavior (e.g., supporting businesses’ food waste endeavors), causing credibility of the hypotheses testing results (Juvan and Dolnicar, 2016). Therefore, this study incorporates and controls for social desirability bias in study 2.