Mapping moral judgments of food waste: Moving beyond truisms

Abstract

Why do people see wasting food as immoral? While previous studies on food-wasting behaviour have explored its moral significance, they often lacked a clear scientific operationalisation of morality. This project bridges the gap between research on food-wasting behaviour and moral psychology by mapping folk moral intuitions about food waste onto the theory-driven Morality-as-Cooperation (MAC) framework.

Across two studies, we identified common folk moral intuitions about why food wasting behaviour is considered immoral and compared them to MAC-based moral domains. We examined how these folk intuitions relate to MAC domains and tested how both influence food-wasting behaviours. The strongest folk predictors of food waste condemnation were concerns for nature, thriftiness, and world hunger, while the key MAC-based intuitions were Fairness (resource distribution), Deference (authority and tradition), and Group Loyalty (community commitment), with Fairness underpinning most folk intuitions. Both folk and cooperative moral intuitions predicted food wasting behaviours, such as discarding unpalatable foods, overshopping, meal planning, and food sharing. Folk intuitions also mediated the link between MAC-based moral concerns (Fairness and Reciprocity) and food-wasting behaviours.

These findings ground folk moral beliefs in a scientific framework, providing a more systematic understanding of food waste morality and offering new insights for more effective interventions.