Reducing the plate waste of families at hotel buffets - a quasi-experimental field study

Dolnicar, Sara (author), Juvan, Emil (author), Grün, Bettina (author)

Twenty percent of all global greenhouse emissions are food-related. Tourism and hospitality contribute significantly, with food accounting for nearly half of the waste these sectors produce. One type of food waste – plate waste – could easily be avoided. Plate waste is the food people leave behind uneaten on their plates. It does not increase the enjoyment of the meal, yet costs the hotel money, and harms the environment. We develop and test – in a quasi-experimental field study – a game-based intervention that reduces plate waste by 34 percent, and is available for immediate adoption by hotels globally. Our study contributes to theory by demonstrating the power of increasing pleasure in pleasure-seeking contexts when aiming to change environmentally significant tourist behaviour. Our findings also challenge established behavioural theories, which postulate that people's beliefs are the key drivers of pro-environmental behaviour.

• Language: English
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Numbering: Vol. 80
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-114901
• UDC: 338.48
• ISSN on article: 0261-5177
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104103
• COBISS.SI-ID: 25595366
• Publication date in RUL: 26.03.2020

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Tourism management
• Shortened title: Tour. manage.
• Publisher: Butterworth Scientific Ltd
• COBISS.SI-ID: 26539264

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 26.03.2020

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: J5-1783
• Name: Okolju prijazno vedenje v turizmu