How Duration-of-Ownership Affects Food Waste Behavior

Abstract：    

Ownership and duration-of-ownership are generally recognized to have positive effects on evaluations and valuation. Can ownership also have deleterious effects? In six experiments, we study how differences in how long people have owned a food product (duration-of-ownership) affect their food evaluations as well as food waste behavior. We find that even when two food products are otherwise identical (i.e., same manufacturing/expiration dates, not expired, previously unopened), consumers are more likely to waste as well as waste more of the one purchased earlier (a longer duration-of-ownership) than that purchased more recently (a shorter duration-of-ownership). We also further delineate one strategy to lower wastage—merely partitioning duration into multiple stages by moving food from one closet to another can lower perceived duration-of-ownership, and thus lower food wastage.

Speaker Biography： 

Vivian (Jieru) Xie is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at NYU Shanghai. She holds a PhD in Marketing from Virginia Tech. Prior to her PhD program, Vivian completed two degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU)—a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and a Master’s in Marketing.

Vivian aims to conduct research to promote consumer and social welfare. Her primary research focus is to understand how consumers make sustainable decisions. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how different factors affect individuals’ disposal decisions. Her research on sustainability was one of the winners of 2020 ACR-Sheth Dissertation Award. In another stream of research, Vivian focuses on how processing of numerical information—such as those relating to time, product ranking, and distributions—influences judgment and decision making.