Forming a Sustainable Model of Consumer’s Palm Oil-Based Food Consumption, and Food Waste Management among Different Personality Traits and Generations in Malaysia.

Research Grant, 2021

Abstract

Food thrown away despite being in edible condition has reached an alarming level. In Malaysia alone, the daily amount of food waste is equivalent to feed 12 million people a day. Palm oil being widely used in Malaysia for food preparation in households and food industry, the wasted food has a large contribution of palm oil-based food. Changes in consumer behavior such as overbuying, are one of the major impetus of food insecurity which causes natural and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. COVID-19 has created a new consumption pattern that may cause a negative snowballing effect on sustainable production and consumption in the food industry. Surprisingly, most of the food waste occurs at the household/consumer level. Even without COVID-19, the evidence presented in the Food Waste Index Report (2021) has indicated that food waste at the consumer level is everybody’s problem and needed attention worldwide. Due to the tremendous amounts of food being wasted and the widespread food insecurity, there have been urgent calls by the United Nations 2021 for the government to tackle the issues involving sustainable consumption and food security from the consumer behaviour/household level in meeting the food needs of the future generation.
Past studies have highlighted that little is known about the role of consumer buying behaviour and multi-faceted factors that can drive consumption, food insecurity, and food waste in middle-and low-income countries. Thus, this study will specifically investigate the effects of social media usage, type of personality traits, frugality, impulse buying behaviour, and type of consumer generations (Generation X, Y, and Z) on food waste.

Project Leader

Siti Ngayesah Ab. Hamid (Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), )