(AGENPARL) – lun 29 luglio 2024 TYPE? Original
Research
June 2024
PUBLISHED? 20
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED BY
Liming Ye,
Ghent University, Belgium
REVIEWED BY
Nilhari Neupane,
International Water Management Institute,
Nepal
Laping Wu,
China Agricultural University, China
*CORRESPONDENCE
Benedetta Peronti
RECEIVED 13
February 2024
May 2024
PUBLISHED 20 June 2024
Food waste behaviors of the
families of the Cilento Bio-District
in comparison with the national
data: elements for policy actions
Jacopo Niccolò Di Veroli?1, Benedetta Peronti?1*,
Umberto Scognamiglio?1, Irene Baiamonte?1, Flavio Paoletti?1,
Lilliana Stefanovic?2, Susanne Gjedsted Bügel?3,
Youssef Aboussaleh?4, Dominika ?rednicka-Tober?5 and
Laura Rossi?1
ACCEPTED 29
CITATION
Di Veroli JN, Peronti B, Scognamiglio U,
Baiamonte I, Paoletti F, Stefanovic L,
Bügel SG, Aboussaleh Y,
?rednicka-Tober D and Rossi L (2024) Food
waste behaviors of the families of the Cilento
Bio-District in comparison with the national
data: elements for policy actions.
COPYRIGHT
© 2024 Di Veroli, Peronti, Scognamiglio,
Baiamonte, Paoletti, Stefanovic, Bügel,
Aboussaleh, ?rednicka-Tober and Rossi. This
is an open-access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (CC BY). The use,
distribution or reproduction in other forums is
permitted, provided the original author(s) and
the copyright owner(s) are credited and that
the original publication in this journal is cited,
in accordance with accepted academic
practice. No use, distribution or reproduction
is permitted which does not comply with
these terms.
?Council for Agricultural Research and Economics – Research Centre for Food and Nutrition (CREA
– Food and Nutrition), Rome, Italy, 2?Section of Organic Food Quality, Faculty Organic Agricultural
Sciences, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany, 3?Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports,
University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark, 4?Department of Life Sciences, Faculty of
Sciences, Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco, 5?Department of Functional and Organic Food,
Institute of Human Nutrition Sciences, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Introduction: Consumer food waste at the household level results from a complex
set of behaviors depending on the local food environment, among other factors.
This study mainly aimed at comparing food waste behaviors in the Cilento BioDistrict with those recorded at the national level to explore if the organic district
model had an impact on food waste attitude as a sustainability element.
Methods: Household food waste behavior indicators performed better at the
national level than in the Cilento Bio-District, with some relevant exceptions,
such as the avoidance of having too much food at home and impulse buying.
Results: The study results suggest that some food waste attitudes in the rural
community of the Bio-District might be so embedded in everyday practices that
they are no longer perceived as relevant descriptors, considering the lower food
waste (FW) levels in Cilento compared to national data. The key findings of the study
were interpreted for policy action development.
Discussion: The overall priority of actions would be the enhancement of
consumers’ abilities to impact practices for food waste prevention. Community
engagement aspects and the local products’ promotion should be particularly
pursued in the Cilento Bio-District, while broader policy actions were proposed at
the national level with the involvement of the different sectors of the food chain and
the proposition of regulatory aspects (e.g., labels). Future research on Cilento BioDistrict characteristics and the comparison with national data would need a more
comprehensive examination of additional factors affecting the food system, such
as dietary patterns or organic product consumption, to understand their potential
influence on food waste and, in general, the sustainability of food choices.
KEYWORDS
food waste, household, Cilento Bio-District, Italy, SysOrg project
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
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Di Veroli et al.
1 Introduction
research, field trials, and dissemination of results among the
scientific community, agricultural professionals, farmers, and
consumers (Associazione Italiana Agricoltura Biologica, 2024).
In general terms, the intended purpose of Bio-Districts is to
safeguard the territory through the promotion of organic regenerative
agriculture practices, encouraging smallholder farmers, supporting
the consumption of local products, and thereby enhancing the short
supply chain. This type of action would impact the agribusiness
system, increasing the sustainability of the whole territory, hosting the
Bio-District, and also influencing the food choices of people living in
the Bio-District area (Pugliese and Antonelli, 2015; Stotten et al., 2018;
Mazzocchi et al., 2022). The global-level impact of Bio-Districts is
related to the fact that they are a new and fast-growing example of
sustainable food systems that use agroecological principles as tools for
rural development (Packer and Zanasi, 2023). The qualitative
development of the Bio-Districts or Eco-regions was the corrective
measure put in place to revitalize territories that experienced
desertification, loss of employment, and the abandonment of rural and
agricultural activities from social, economic, and environmental
perspectives (Dias et al., 2021). The increasing interest in Bio-Districts
is part of the debate on the capacity to integrate agri-food systems with
the territory to improve the quality of life in rural communities
(Guareschi et al., 2020). The concept of a Bio-District was particularly
in line with the European Green Deal (European Commission, 2019),
which claimed a transition of the agri-food sector into a sustainable
production and consumption model, as well as the European “Farm
to Fork” strategy (European Commission Farm to Fork Strategy, 2020)
that aimed to make the food system fair, healthy, and environmentally
friendly (Poponi et al., 2021).
Sustainability and food security are influenced by food loss in the
early stages of the supply chain and food waste (FW) in the final stages
(United Nations, 2015; Beretta et  al., 2017). Wasted food causes
economic and environmental damage, with the loss of raw materials,
energy, and labor.
In addition to that, food waste (FW) represents a relevant social
issue considering that waste prevention would contribute to a more
equitable food resource distribution (Roe et  al., 2020). In the
European context, the highest level of FW occurred at the household
level in which 54% of still edible food was thrown away (Eurostat,
2022). For this reason, many studies in recent years have focused
on measuring FW generated by consumers (Herzberg et al., 2020;
Ilakovac et  al., 2020; Grant et  al., 2023). In addition to the
quantification, it is important to evaluate the reasons for food waste
which are varied and depend on several factors and behaviors
(European Commission, Joint Research Centre, 2023). Van Geffen
et al. (2016) designed a conceptual model for consumer food waste,
investigating the attitudes about FW in the household. The analysis
of the drivers and motivations behind FW generation is of relevance
for the development of actionable recommendations and policy
actions to prevent and reduce the quantity of food thrown away
in families.
The present study originated from an international project and
a national action that are interrelated in terms of objectives having
FW as a common topic with the possibility that the outcomes of the
one could feed up the findings and conclusions of the other. The
European project SysOrg (Organic agro-food systems as models for
sustainable food systems in Europe and Northern Africa) studied
the Cilento Bio-District as a typical territory experiencing a positive
Agri-food systems play a key role in influencing environmental
sustainability. It is estimated that population growth will require
the primary production to generate more food to address the needs
of all, causing the system to strain to keep up with demand (Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2017).
Addressing the environmental and social challenges of food
systems is essential for promoting responsible resource
management and ensuring the health of both the planet and the
communities. In the context of the sustainability of food systems,
the model of the Bio-Districts should be considered given their
role in territorial protection (Stefanovic and Agbolosoo-Mensah,
2023). The design of the Bio-District was derived from Becattini’s
concept (Becattini, 2017) of the industrial district and was defined
as a community of people and businesses “in one naturally and
historically bounded area.” Hence, the districts are characterized
by being a homogeneous system of values and opinions.
Specifically, a Bio-District is “a geographical area where farmers,
citizens, tourist operators, associations and public authorities agree
with the sustainable management of local resources, based on
organic production and consumption” (Basile and Cuoco, 2012).
The concept of Bio-Districts is also enshrined in Law No. 205 of 27
December 2017 (Rete Rurale Nazionale et  al., 2018). The first
Bio-District in Europe was set up in 2009  in Southern Italy,
specifically in the Cilento area of the Campania region (Figure 1).
This example has inspired the creation of many other Bio-Districts
over the years not only in Italy but also in other countries. The
International Network of Organic Regions (IN.N.E.R, 2022) has
expanded the management of Bio-Districts to several other
countries in Europe. To date, it registered 74 Bio-Districts
throughout Europe, with 63 already established and 11 under
development. In 2020, in Rome, the IN.N.E.R. signed an important
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the world’s leading
organic organizations: Asian Local Governments for Organic
Agriculture (ALGOA), International Federation of Organic
Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), IFOAM Asia, IFOAM EU, and
Baltic Foundation. Later in the same year, the members of the
mentioned MoU founded the Global Alliance for Organic Districts
(GAOD). The purpose of the GAOD is to support the various
governance of Bio-Districts around the world in their development;
a network of experts, and local or national institutions from several
territories, was created to support the development and growth of
the Bio-Districts. The IN.N.E.R. and GAOD organize living labs,
education programs, and working groups to engage the Bio-District
stakeholders toward the common goal of protecting the biodiversity
of the land by making sustainable choices (Global Alliance for
Organic Districts, 2023). At the national level, the Italian
Association for Organic Agriculture has promoted several
territorial initiatives under common traits that allowed for the
development of guidelines for the use of the registered trademark
“Bio-District” (Basile and Cuoco, 2012). In addition, this
association supports various research projects at national,
European, and international levels, promoting participatory
Abbreviations: CBD, Cilento Bio-District; FLW, Food Loss and Waste; FW, Food
Waste; HFWB, Household Food Waste Behavior.
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
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Di Veroli et al.
FIGURE 1
The map of the Cilento Bio-District and its position in the Italian Southern Region.
ecological transition (SysOrg project, 2021). This project started in
2021 (period of activity 2021–2024) to investigate the barriers and
drivers for transforming the food system and increasing its
sustainability. In addition to the Cilento-Bio-District, the other
territories studied in the SysOrg project are Copenhagen
Municipality, Warsaw Municipality, North Hessia Federal State, and
Kenitra Province. Four perspectives will be  examined for each
territory, namely, diet, organic food and farming, FW, and food
system transition aspects. A previous study (Peronti et al., 2024) on
the waste perspective of the SysOrg project reported that in Cilento
Bio-District, FW accounted for 136?g (SE 3.5) per person per week,
and that food was thrown away as partly used (38%), meal leftovers
(31%), completely unused (20%), and stored leftovers (11%).
Furthermore, the comparative analysis confirmed that rural areas,
e.g., Cilento Bio-District in Italy and North Hessia Federal State in
Germany were better at preventing FW than metropolitan areas
(Warsaw and Copenhagen). At the national level, the waste
perspective of the SysOrg project activities carried out in the
Cilento Bio-District was studied under the umbrella of the Italian
Observatory on food surplus, recovery, and waste, a technical entity
with a pivotal role in the production of research, methodologies,
and data. The Observatory developed methodologies for a
comprehensive assessment of FW that include the quantification
and the element of consumers’ behavior which could influence the
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
generation of waste. The evaluation of household FW at the national
and regional levels has monitoring purposes to support the
development of actions aimed at preventing and reducing FW
(Grant and Rossi, 2022).
This study mainly aimed at comparing the FW behaviors of
people living in the Cilento Bio-District with the FW attitudes
recorded at the national level. Specifically, FW behavioral indicators,
such as preventive practices, personal abilities, competing goals,
meaning the prioritization of goals in conflict with food waste
generation, food involvement attitude, and parents’ attention to
food waste, have been analyzed in the context of the Cilento
Bio-District to explore if this model had an impact on the FW
behavior as a sustainability element. The third objective of the study
was the provision of inputs for preventive actions analyzing the
differences and commonalities of a local area with specificities, such
as Cilento Bio-District, with respect to the actions that could
be promoted at the national level.
As mentioned, Cilento Bio-District represents a peculiar reality
in Italy being the first organic district that inspired the creation of
other similar territories in Italy. Hence, the theoretical hypothesis
underlying this study was that in the Cilento Bio-District, the
metrics of FW attitudes and behavior indicators would better
correspond to FW prevention and reduction considering the
inherent organic districts’ concept of sustainability and protection
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Di Veroli et al.
2.2 The questionnaire
of natural resources. The comparison between Cilento Bio-District
data and national data was made possible due to the provision of
methodologies, developed by the Italian Observatory, which
permitted the comparative assessment. The research questions that
this study intended to address are as follows: (i) What are the
metrics of FW behaviors in Cilento Bio-District and Italy? (ii) What
are the reasons, motivations, or barriers for waste reduction and
prevention? (iii) What are the distinctive elements, if any, of the FW
behaviors that could address the development of preventive actions
at local and national levels?
The questionnaire used in the present study was shaped
according to the objective of the study. In the Cilento Bio-District
survey and the Italian national survey, the same questionnaire
assessing the Household Food Waste Behaviors (HFWB) by
measuring the determinants and behaviors of consumers toward
FW was used (Supplementary Table S1). The questionnaire included
an initial part covering sociodemographic information (sex, age,
level of education, typology of job, region of living, and size of the
family). The HFWB section comprised a validated questionnaire
developed by Van Herpen et al. (2019) and further adapted to the
Italian context. The Italian version of the HFWB questionnaire is a
tool of the Italian Observatory tested and used in different surveys
(Scalvedi and Rossi, 2021; Grant and Rossi, 2022) for monitoring
purposes. In congruence with the design outlined in the introduction,
the HFWB section of the questionnaire consisted of 11 questions that
comprised 52 items assessing the following sections: (i) Prevention
practices (e.g., planning of shopping, impulse buying, and using
leftovers); (ii) Personal Abilities to prevent food waste generation (e.g.,
difficulties in assessing food safety, creative cooking, and accurate
planning); (iii) Competing goals meaning the prioritization of food
choice behaviors in potential conflict with food waste reduction (e.g.,
safety, taste, convenience of use, costs, and attention to quantity); (vi)
Food involvement attitude (e.g., enjoyment of cooking, talking about
food, and enjoyment of mixing or chopping food); (v) Parents’
attention to food waste (e.g., parents’ awareness of food waste, parents’
teaching on the value of food, and maintenance of the attention
toward food waste when growing up). A seven-point scale was used
with answers ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” or
from “never” to “always.”
Participation in the survey was voluntary and anonymous, and the
participants were informed about the objectives of the study and the
intention to publish the results. Data were collected following the
European Commission General Data Protection Regulation (679/2016),
and the study was conducted according to the guidelines of the
Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association, 2018). The
questionnaire was administered using the Computer-Assisted Web
Interview (CAWI) system or Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview
(CATI) system for non-internet user respondents. All procedures
involving research study participants were approved and are in line with
the Code of Conduct of the agencies that performed the data collection
(Format research; SWG, 2021). The assessments neither involved any
invasive procedures nor induced any changes in dietary patterns.
Therefore, the study did not require approval from the ethics committee.
2 Materials and methods
The data presented in this study were derived from two sets of
data collections in which the same questionnaire was used: (i) The
Cilento Bio-District study, a cross-sectional assessment, carried
out in 2023 and (ii) The Italian national survey carried out in
2021. The datasets of the two assessments were duly elaborated for
the comparative purpose of the present study. The comparison of
FW behaviors at both the local (Cilento Bio-District) and national
levels allowed for a comprehensive understanding of FW
dynamics, including variations across different geographical
scales. Local specificities and factors that may contribute to FW
behaviors within the Cilento Bio-District were identified
and discussed.
2.1 Methodology of the surveys
The Cilento study was a cross-sectional assessment conducted
by administrating a questionnaire to adult (>18?years) residents in
the 95 municipalities of the Cilento Bio-District territory. The data
collection was carried out from 13 April to 9 May 2023. A sample
of 541 subject representatives of the population residents in the
target territory completed the survey. The sample was stratified by
sex and age groups. The random selection of respondents was
carried out using the municipalities’ personal data lists of the
Cilento Bio-District residents.
The 2021 Italian survey was a nationally representative crosssectional assessment for which the detailed sampling procedure was
reported in the study by Grant et  al. (2023). In summary, the
fieldwork was carried out between 5 July and 21 July 2021 and
included 1,104 respondents with a quota of 110 subjects that did not
use telematic tools. A stratification plan for Italian macro-regions
(North-East, North-West, Centre, South, and Islands),
differentiating for the town size (small: 100,000 inhabitants)
and using minimum quotas for family size and age for each macroregion, was carried out.
The sampling unit of the two studies was the family, although
the surveys’ respondents were responsible for food purchasing
and preparation.
The fieldwork was performed with the collaboration of two
specialized consumer agencies, Format Research S.r.l. for the
Cilento Bio-District survey and SWG S.p.A. for national data
collection. The consumer agencies permitted the recruitment of the
respondents in accordance with the study protocol.
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
2.3 Data analysis
The seven-point scale of the answers to the questionnaires was
used to calculate scores ranging from 1 (minimum) to 7
(maximum). A descriptive analysis of the scores was performed
using means, standard deviation, and frequencies. The presence of
frequencies’ significant association between the area of residence
and HFWB variables was assessed by the chi-squared test of
independence which checks for a relation between two variables.
This test aimed to compare the observed and expected frequencies
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Di Veroli et al.
3 Results
under the assumption of independence, given the rows and columns
of the contingency table. The values ?0.05 were considered
significant, which is sufficient to reject the hypothesis of
independence. Furthermore, the effect size was measured by
complementing the chi-squared test with Cramer’s V calculation
carried out using the following formula:
The sociodemographic characteristics of the samples analyzed in
the present study are shown in Table  1. The Cilento Bio-District
showed a high proportion (30%) of young people (18–34?years) and a
small percentage (9%) of families with one member in comparison to
Italy (14 and 20% respectively). On the other hand, the high education
level (high school) proportion was greater in the national sample
(52%) than in the Cilento Bio-District (43%).
The results of the HFWB sections of the survey are reported in the
following paragraphs. The detailed responses to all the questions are
shown in Supplementary Tables S2–S6.
min ( r ? 1;c ? 1) n
where ? 2?=?chi-squared statistic; r?=?number of rows; c?=?number
of columns; and n?=?number of observations.
V interpretation was carried out considering the values of 0.1
corresponding to small effect size magnitude, 0.3 corresponding to
medium effect size magnitude, and 0.5 corresponding to large effect
size magnitude (Cohen, 1988; University of Cambridge, 2021).
The presence of significant differences between the mean scores
of the two territories was evaluated using the t-test for two
independent samples. The values ?0.05 were considered significant,
which is sufficient to reject the hypothesis that the means of the two
territories were equal with an association of the means. In this case,
the magnitude of the effect size was measured by complementing the
t-test with Cohen’s D calculation carried out using the
following formula:
3.1 Food waste prevention practices
In the section, assessing the behaviors on FW prevention
practices, the inhabitants of Cilento Bio-District recorded slightly
worse average scores than respondents at the national level, with the
only exception of the items related to impulse buying. The group of
items related to leftover utilization received the highest average scores
at the Cilento Bio-District and the national level with differences in
the selected options, i.e., the habit of finishing all what is on the plate
(no leftovers generation) for the Cilento Bio-District (5.55; SD 1.37)
and the attitude of saving the leftovers if cooked too much for Italy
(5.99; SD 1.22). Activities related to food planning and management
registered the worst mean scores with the construct on the planning
for cooking every day having the lowest values both in Cilento
Bio-District (4.14; SD 1.84) and Italy (4.10; SD 1.65) (Table 2 and
Supplementary Table S2).
Scores of food waste prevention practices and metrics of the
association with territorial variables are shown in Table 2. The food
waste prevention practices in Italy and the Cilento Bio-District
moderately diverged, even though for more than half of the practices,
significant differences were found. The strongest differences between
the Cilento Bio-District and Italy were found in the items related to
storing and using leftovers. The territory of residence was significantly
associated (small-medium magnitude of the effect size) (V?=?0.21;
D?=??0.39 both with a p-value of?