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Spatial patterns in food waste at the local level. A preliminary analysis for Italian data
Author(s) -
Cerciello Massimiliano
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
regional science policy and practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.342
H-Index - 8
ISSN - 1757-7802
DOI - 10.1111/rsp3.12259
Subject(s) - per capita , food waste , index (typography) , panel data , spatial analysis , econometrics , scope (computer science) , work (physics) , geography , regional science , economics , computer science , engineering , population , environmental health , remote sensing , waste management , medicine , mechanical engineering , world wide web , programming language
Within the scope of its broader environmental strategy, the European Commission aims to halve per capita food waste by 2030. This medium‐run objective might be especially hard to achieve in the presence of strong autocorrelation in food waste levels. This work investigates spatio‐temporal persistency and spatial diffusion patterns in food waste at the local level, resorting to a NUTS 3 dataset for Italian provinces. The first step of the empirical analysis consists in the computation of the Moran Index and of the Theil Index. Subsequently, a dynamic spatial panel regression is proposed, controlling for socio‐economic factors and treating both time lags and spatial spillovers explicitly. The results support the idea that food waste levels in Italian provinces are persistent over time and spatially related, thus calling for the design of locally tailored policy instruments.