Identifying determinants of household food waste behavior in urban India

Food waste is an unresolved problem for the developed world economies and is slowly creeping into the growing urban areas of the developing nations. The study aims to find the determinants of household food waste behavior in the national capital region of India. It uses a structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze data from 372 urban households to explore the relationship between household food waste behavior with the latent variables namely, financial consciousness, food consumption management, intention to avoid food waste and COVID-19 impact. Our results show that households which show good food consumption management practices reported lesser household food wastage. Furthermore, it is observed COVID-19 positively impacted the food consumption management of households. The need is for raising awareness and imparting knowledge on how to improve food consumption management practices of the rapidly rising urban population of developing economies to prevent food wastage at the household level.