IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v101y2019i2p600-614..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Food Policy and Household Food Waste

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen F Hamilton
  • Timothy J Richards

Abstract

Reducing household food waste is an important policy objective. In this paper we examine how equilibrium food waste among households is influenced by food policies designed to increase household food utilization and to alter household food purchasing behavior by adjusting market prices. We demonstrate that policies that reduce the marginal cost of household food utilization and that raise fresh food prices result in greater food waste for households with sufficiently price-elastic demand for fresh food. Policies that raise the processed food prices increase fresh food consumption, but nevertheless reduce food waste, provided that fresh and processed foods are substitutes in utility and the equilibrium food utilization rate in a household is sufficiently high.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen F Hamilton & Timothy J Richards, 2019. "Food Policy and Household Food Waste," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 101(2), pages 600-614.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:101:y:2019:i:2:p:600-614.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ajae/aay109
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liang Lu & Ruby Nguyen & Md Mamunur Rahman & Jason Winfree, 2021. "Demand Shocks and Supply Chain Resilience: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach and Application to the Potato Supply Chain," NBER Chapters, in: Risks in Agricultural Supply Chains, pages 107-132, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Xu, Lei, 2024. "Household Food Waste Patterns: Exploring Categorical Price and Expenditure Elasticities Using a Demand System Approach," 2024 Annual Meeting, July 28-30, New Orleans, LA 343717, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Aino Friman & Nina Hyytiä, 2022. "The Economic and Welfare Effects of Food Waste Reduction on a Food-Production-Driven Rural Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-18, March.
    4. Yang Yu & Edward C. Jaenicke, 2021. "“Progress and Challenges in Empirical Food Waste Research” – Authors' Response to Comment," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(1), pages 26-29, January.
    5. Luo, Na & Olsen, Tava & Liu, Yanping & Zhang, Abraham, 2022. "Reducing food loss and waste in supply chain operations," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    6. Yu, Yang & Jaenicke, Edward C., 2021. "The effect of sell-by dates on purchase volume and food waste," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    7. Sarah Rohr & Stuart Mounter & Derek Baker, 2024. "Implications for Economic Sustainability of Food Systems from Reductions in Household Food Waste: The Case of the Australian Apple Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-14, January.
    8. Yang Yu & Edward C. Jaenicke, 2020. "Estimating Food Waste as Household Production Inefficiency," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(2), pages 525-547, March.
    9. Yu, Yang & Fan, Linlin, 2021. "How Does Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Affect Household Food Waste?," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 313984, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    10. Jafari, Yaghoob & Britz, Wolfgang & Hasan, Dudu & Roson, Roberto & Sartori, Martina, 2020. "Can Food Waste Reduction in Europe Help to Increase Food Availability and Reduce Pressure on Natural Resources Globally?," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 69(2), May.
    11. D’Amato, Alessio & Goeschl, Timo & Lorè, Luisa & Zoli, Mariangela, 2023. "True to type? EU-style date marking and the valuation of perishable food," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    12. Robert Evan Sanders, 2024. "Dynamic Pricing and Organic Waste Bans: A Study of Grocery Retailers’ Incentives to Reduce Food Waste," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 289-316, March.
    13. Brian E. Roe & Kathryn Bender & Danyi Qi, 2021. "The Impact of COVID‐19 on Consumer Food Waste," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(1), pages 401-411, March.
    14. Abdelrahman Ali & Chunping Xia & Moustafa Ismaiel & N’Banan Ouattara & Irfan Mahmood & Dessalegn Anshiso, 2021. "Analysis of determinants to mitigate food losses and waste in the developing countries: empirical evidence from Egypt," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 26(6), pages 1-26, August.
    15. Jian Li & Wuyang Hu & Ping Qing & Jean‐Paul Chavas, 2024. "On household food stock and waste under risk," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 72(1), pages 23-44, March.
    16. Yu Zhang & Danyi Qi, 2024. "How to reduce household food waste during and after the COVID‐19 lockdown? Evidence from a structural model," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 68(3), pages 628-652, July.
    17. Jayson L. Lusk & Brenna Ellison, 2020. "Economics of household food waste," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 68(4), pages 379-386, December.
    18. Travis A. Smith & Craig E. Landry, 2021. "Household Food Waste and Inefficiencies in Food Production," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(1), pages 4-21, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Food waste; household behavior;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:101:y:2019:i:2:p:600-614.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.