Abstract
As a fast-growing business sector, online food delivery (OFD) has attracted strong interest during the last few years, not only from investors and other industry stakeholders but also from academics worldwide. While the successes of the sector are well documented, critical studies that explore some of the associated negative impacts are less common. In particular, there is a lack of information about the food waste (FW) associated with OFD. This is surprising given the intense analysis of FW issues occurring in other supply chain stages and in other sectors. Given China is the world’s largest OFD market, it makes sense to study the OFD FW situation in this context, as the reduction of waste in China will likely lead to the biggest global gains. Thus, this thesis investigates Chinese consumers’ behaviours regarding OFD food consumption and wastage. As well as painting a picture of the current landscape, the thesis explores the antecedents of these FW behaviours to gain insights that will help develop effective FW mitigation strategies and improve the sustainability of the OFD sector moving forward.
A combination of research techniques was employed to reveal the key findings presented in the four results chapters that constitute this thesis. Firstly, a narrative literature review (Chapter 2) was conducted to explore the broader impacts of OFD and what they mean for the stakeholders involved. Given the newness of the OFD sector, a narrative literature review approach permitted us to be more reflective and critical when analysing the documents. Using the three pillars of sustainability as a lens through which to consider the impacts, the review presented the most up-to-date research in this field at the time of writing and revealed a raft of positive and negative impacts associated with OFD. From an economic standpoint, while OFD provides job and sale opportunities, it has been criticised for the high commission it charges restaurants and questionable working conditions for delivery people. From a social perspective, OFD affects the relationship between consumers and their food, influencing public health outcomes and traffic systems. Environmental impacts include the significant generation of waste and its high carbon footprints. Stakeholders must consider how best to mitigate the negative and promote the positive impacts of OFD to ensure it is sustainable. Also, academic research is required to investigate these impacts and explore how to scale these for greater effectiveness.
A systematic review (chapter 3) was conducted to explore the food loss and waste (FL&W) situation along the food supply chain (FSC) in China. A systematic review approach, which allowed us to interrogate the fragmented findings on FL&W in China in a comprehensive manner, was the most appropriate review type for synthesising and conceptualising the relevant studies and to enable hard conclusions about the state of FL&W to be derived. Although preventing FL&W is high on China’s national policy agenda, there was still limited scientific information published on the extent of FL&W from a whole supply chain perspective. Thus, this review provided an interdisciplinary collation of what is already known about how much FL&W exists in China, its impacts, and discussed steps that could be taken to reduce it. Fifty-seven relevant papers were identified in both English and Chinese databases followed PRISMA guidelines, further complemented with a qualitative content analysis process. The review revealed confounding factors such as inconsistency of the definitions, methods and calculations used to measure FL&W, and research gaps such as a lack of focus on the behavioural factors pertaining to waste, and the limited range of social innovations studied to reduce it. This review (chapter 3) highlights that there is limited research attention paid to the OFD FW in China regarding consumers’ consumption and waste behaviours, and further developed research agendas designed to advance efforts in this field. Taken together, the two review chapters (2&3) provided evidence of the need for further empirical work in the OFD field to understand consumption and disposal practices in China. Therefore, the following two chapters did just that.
Firstly, to provide a snapshot of the OFD food consumption and wastage situation, a quantitative study (chapter 4) was conducted with 449 participants (and their 771 meals) from four cities in China who were asked to complete a one-week online diary. The majority of the OFD food was consumed by participants alone for a functional purpose. 24% of participants did not finish at least one meal resulting in 17% of meals being unfinished. 14% of participants ultimately threw out (e.g. saved then threw out) their unfinished food. Food-related factors such as ‘delicious’ or ‘appropriate portion size’ were the major reasons for the finishing food. In contrast, people-related factors such as ‘shamefulness’ or ‘habitus’ played a more significant role in the saving of unfinished food. Participants’ OFD food consumption behaviour could be better predicted by behavioural factors such as OFD ordering frequency rather than socio-demographic factors such as gender or age. While this study provided an understanding of the current situation, it was apparent that a better understanding of the drivers for OFD waste generation was required to implement meaningful reduction strategies.
Therefore, the following study (chapter 5) focused on exploring the antecedents of FW behaviour in OFD settings. This study applied the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) with Food-related Factors (FrF) as an additional construct. An online survey provided quantitative data from 520 participants representatively distributed in age and gender across seven cities geographically spread across China. The average frequency for consumers wasting OFD food was ‘rarely’ (less than 10% of my OFD orders) to ‘occasionally’ (less than 30% of my OFD orders). The extended TPB model was useful in predicting consumer FW behaviour in OFD settings and it was found that the intention of not wasting food had a significant negative effect on FW behaviour. Attitudes and perceived behavioural control (PBC) positively affected the intention of not wasting food, while FrF negatively affected it.
Taken all together, the results from this thesis highlight that OFD FW is an issue worthy of continued attention and action from all stakeholders.