The Association Between the Attitude of Food-Waste-Aversion and BMI: An Exploration in India and the United States
Rajagopal Raghunathan, Deepa Chandrasekaran
Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2021 · Volume 31 · Issue 1
Abstract
This research proposes the existence of a hitherto undocumented attitude related to food wastage: the attitude of food-waste-aversion. We develop a 6-item scale including affective, cognitive, and conative components to measure this attitude and empirically investigate its properties in two countries using novel datasets. We test for food-waste-aversion scale's convergent validity by demonstrating that it is correlated in the expected direction with five theoretically related constructs—frugality, social responsibility, spendthriftness, self-control, and materialism (Studies 1a and 1b)—and with BMI (Studies 2 and 3). We provide more indirect evidence of the scale's convergent validity by documenting that the link between food-waste-aversion and BMI is attenuated among those who practice refrigerating leftovers (Study 3). We also document that the food-waste-aversion scale is distinct from general waste aversion and external meal-cessation rules, thus providing evidence of discriminant validity (Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c). Taken together, these results provide construct validity for the novel construct of food-waste-aversion. We discuss the theoretical and substantive contributions of our findings.
Keywords
BMI, food-waste-aversion, weight gain
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