HANDOUT: 5th GROUP

Good Taste, Don't Waste: Psychological Components of Waste Food

Behavior Within the Framework of the Comprehensive Action Determination
Model through the Intervention Program

The main purposes of this study is to determine the psychological components

underlying the behavior of individuals who produce waste food within the framework of
Comprehensive Action Determination Model (CADM) by applying preventive interventions.
Many foods produced today are wasted before they reach their intended purpose. Most of
these foods that produced cannot reach their purpose by turning into waste food during the
production and consumption stages. The energy required to transfer, store and cook food
during food production and consumption stages causes carbon emissions, damaging nature
and causing climate change. The 923 million tonnes of food being wasted each year would fill
23 million 40-tonne trucks and 214 billion lira of food is wasted every year in our country.
Waste food generated in stores, homes and restaurants constitutes 60% of waste food rates. In
order to prevent this food waste, various mobile applications have been designed both in our
country and in other countries. Yenir app is an application created in order to avoid wastage in
the food sector in Turkey. Waste food poses very important threats to our world and our
environment as statistical data show. Small planning to reduce food waste, especially in
homes, shops, restaurants and work will play a major role in preventing waste food. It is very
important for the future of the world to understand the underlying causes of the waste food
creation behavior of individuals and to conduct intervention studies against them.

As in other subfields of psychology, various theories are used in environmental

psychology to understand the components of individuals' behaviors that affect the
environment. The Comprehensive Action Determination Model (CADM) is a more inclusive
framework created by combining Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), the Norm-Activation-
Theory (NAT), and the Value-Belief-Norm-Theory (VBN). CADM integrates intentional,
normative, situational, and habitual influences in explaining pro-environmental behavior and
there are some series of studies in different behavioral domains such as recycling, travel mode
choice and personal clothing consumption. It is more important to investigate the
psychological determinants of behavior in order to be able to make preventive interventions.
Thus, we aimed to determine the psychological components of waste food creation behavior,
so it is aimed to examine the effects of other components such as intention, awareness of
waste food, social norm, personal norm, attitude, perceived behavioral control, outcome
efficacy and habitual behaviour within the framework of CADM.

This work will be carried out in 2 separate branches of a textile factory. One of the
two branches will be the experimental group and the other will be the control group. White
collar employees will be included in the study. Participation is completely voluntary. In the
first phase of the study, a questionnaire will be applied to both groups. This questionnaire
consists of 8 subtitles that aim to measure people's opinions about personal norms, social
norms, attitudes, intention, habit, perceived behavior control, outcome efficacy, awareness of
waste food. Participants will convey their thoughts on the subject with a 7-point Likert rating
(1 is the lowest, 7 is the highest). After the questionnaire, a 3-month intervention program will
be applied to the experimental group. The intervention program includes informative seminars
on waste meals and the delivery of some messages via TV, e-mail, posters. Some discounts
will be provided to the experimental group if they use this application through the Yenir
application.

After the intervention program, the questionnaire presented at the beginning of the
study will be repeated to the experimental and control groups. In addition, the food waste of
the two groups will be recorded every day and the rates will be compared at the end of the
study.

The structural equation model will be used to determine which CADM components are
effective on the behavior of producing waste food. Then t-test will be used to compare the
pre-test and post-test results. SPSS program will be used for these analyzes.

The aim of our study is to try to understand the psychological components that underlie
waste food production behavior, and to understand the mechanisms behind changing waste
food behavior of people at work by applying CADM. In addition, we aim to reduce the waste
food behavior by using the 'Yenir' application in our study and to spread the use of the 'Yenir'
application. Waste food issue has not been studied using CADM in the literature and our
study fills this gap in the literature.

At the end of our intervention, we expect the experimental group's waste food behavior
to decrease. Additionally, we expect CADM components to be effective in explaining this
reduced behavior.
 The duration of our intervention for 3 months is determined to serve social norms. The
‘Yenir’ application was used to serve the personal norm. We expect their beliefs about the
consequences of their actions to serve the outcome efficacy; seminars, brochures or
advertisements to serve awareness of waste food; participants' own behavior to serve 3
perceived behavior control; eating habits to serve the habit; and we expect the attitude and all
other components to serve intention.

Our limitations include selection only participants from Istanbul, selection only White-
collar employees, the Hawthorne effect, and the adaptation of CADM components from study
to study / subject to subject. Future studies may work on waste food in other areas.

081611014 Büşra Nur CEYLAN

081611022 Selimcan EFE

081611023 Özlem YENİGÜL

081711151 Oğuzhan Murat KURT