The effect of dietary awareness on household food waste

How to reduce household food waste has emerged as an important issue worldwide. Considering the potential endogeneity issue, the present study utilizes the treatment effects model to analyse the effect of dietary awareness on household food waste using data from China. The results showed that improving dietary awareness could significantly increase household food waste overall. However, this impact is heterogeneous among households of different characteristics. Improving dietary awareness leads to more food waste for households with young and old food decision-makers, but contributes to less food waste for households of middle-aged makers. Also, the positive effect of dietary awareness on household food waste weakens as income increases. These findings propose a new perspective to understand the heterogeneity in household food waste in the context of dietary awareness promotion.