The association between the awareness campaign and food waste among university students in China

The "Clean Your Plate", as an important awareness campaign, has been widely adopted by Chinese universities. This study aimed to verify the association between the awareness campaign and plate waste in Chinese universities based on a national survey. The results show that, compared with students who were not familiar with this campaign, the probability of food waste among individuals who were familiar with the campaign was 2.80 % lower. The awareness campaign had no significant correlation with the weight of plate waste generated by students. Compared with traditional posters, slogans and signs, watching food-saving videos recently only made the negative association between the awareness campaign and the probability of wasting greater. The findings suggest that the highly anticipated awareness campaign played a limited role in wastage reduction in Chinese universities, and even by changing the medium through which messages are communicated, from static to dynamic, better reduction results cannot be achieved.