In industrialized countries, 40% of food also gets wasted because consumers demand and retailers supply only cosmetically perfect food. In China, as a result of growing affluence and escalating urbanization, food consumption has increased in the past decade, and the country’s
1.35 billion people are hungry for more. However, increased food consumption also increases food waste, to an extent that the problem demands immediate action. In 2008, daily food waste reached 726 tons in Beijing and 589 tons in Shanghai. Expanding Chinese urbanization also has shifted food retailing from fragmented, local markets to larger, centralized supermarkets creating a $148 billion supermarket industry. With the entry of international market players such as Tesco, and Walmart, China’s supermarket industry is expected to grow at an annual rate of 12.8%. If Chinese consumers adopt the same unsustainable decision path for judging food on the basis of its physical appearance that their Western counterparts have followed, which constitutes a significant driver of food waste, global food waste will grow
even greater. In response, this research examines the impact of food shape abnormality on consumers’ purchase intentions and the potential moderation by environmental concern and social trust. Although consumers clearly prefer cosmetically perfect food, leading retailers to discard food that does not live up to such standards, improved understanding of this assumption could better inform retailers’ decision making with regard to what food to showcase for consumers. Furthermore, worsening environmental conditions in China have led to increased levels of environmental concern and added environmental issues to public agendas. Thus a recent anti-food waste campaign (‘‘Operation Empty Plate’’) by the government urged Chinese consumers to finish their meals in restaurants rather than leaving half-finished dishes. In turn, consumers with greater environmental concerns might react to food shape abnormality differently than consumers with lower environmental concerns. Whether consumers engage in pro-environmental behavior like reduction of food waste also depends on their level of trust in those who regulate or produce food. Because trust has been identified as a barrier to acting pro-environmentally or can
leverage the impact of consumers’ engagement in environmental behavior, we anticipate that individual levels of trust in institutions (e.g., government, scientists) might influence consumers’ purchase intentions toward abnormal food. The closer we move to an understanding of which individual factors provoke Chinese consumers to purchase abnormally shaped food, the better we will be able to design communication campaigns and education programs aimed to inhibit food retailer’s unsustainable custom to only showcase picture perfect food in grocery stores.