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Demand for Household Food Waste
Author(s) -
Landry Craig E,
Smith Travis A
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
applied economic perspectives and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.4
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 2040-5804
pISSN - 2040-5790
DOI - 10.1093/aepp/ppy037
Subject(s) - food waste , agricultural economics , economics , stock (firearms) , food consumption , price elasticity of demand , proxy (statistics) , income elasticity of demand , business , labour economics , microeconomics , geography , waste management , archaeology , machine learning , computer science , engineering
We estimate the demand for food waste within the household using observational data of food stock usage and meal consumption, the net of which forms a proxy for unconsumed food. We find that food waste is a luxury good with an expenditure elasticity ranging from 1.1 to 1.4. The wasting of food is also rather responsive to price: our own‐price elasticity estimates range from ‐1.9 to ‐1.3. We further find differences in the demand for food waste related to household membership structure, human capital, joint preparation of meals within the household, and geographic location.