Tackling the complexity of guests? food waste reduction behaviour in the hospitality industry

Food waste reduction represents a significant sustainability and economic problem and is being effectively examined by researchers, organisations, and governments around the world. Yet, guests' decision formation for such sustainable behaviours has not been sufficiently investigated in the hospitality and tourism industry. This study fills such gap, utilising advanced approach to demonstrate how a combination of demographic and socioeconomic, attitude and values, and anticipated feelings can stimulate guests' food waste reduction behaviour (FWRB). A conceptual framework has been developed according to complexity theory, which was tested utilising fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 1295 guests. Our empirical findings revealed that no single variable is sufficient to predict guests' behaviours towards food waste reduction, but five casual recipes were identified for stimulating high FWRB. These findings help practitioners to develop new strategies and approaches to stimulate guests' behaviours towards food waste reduction.