The Effect of Plate and Decoration Color on Consumer Food Waste in Restaurants: A Case of Four Chinese Cities

Food waste hampers global food security, rational use of global resources and environmental sustainability. Food waste is becoming a global problem, especially on restaurants, and it is particularly important to explore more effective measures to reduce food waste. Color psychology studies show that color can influence human behavior, but how colors may affect consumer food waste behavior has not been thoroughly investigated to date. In this study, we aim to investigate whether food plate colors or restaurant decorations affect food waste behavior using a large-scale field survey in four Chinese cities (2160 samples across Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Lhasa). Our results show that the per capita food waste of all consumers in the surveyed restaurants was 80.21 g per meal, whereas the per capita food waste of those with warm-color plates was 61.83 g per meal. The results suggest that warm plate colors are associated with reduced restaurant consumer food waste. We also show that the restaurant decoration color was found to correlate significantly with the reduced amount of food ordered per capita per meal (both warm and cool colors). Cool colors for plates and decoration have a negative effect on the weight of per capita per meal food eaten. Additionally, other characteristics of consumers, such as their age, education, and income levels, and other factors, such as for the purposes of meals, were found to affect food waste behavior. Our case study suggests that further investigation into the role of color psychology may be warranted to help mitigate consumer food waste.