Household food waste and the opportunity cost of time

Abstract

This article provides empirical evidence showing that the opportunity cost of time explains the frequency of household food waste. We analyze three waves of a longitudinal panel survey representative of the French population. In the second wave, the respondents were asked whether they had wasted food during the previous week. The first and third waves (conducted before and after the survey asking about wasted food) asked about household characteristics and proxies for the opportunity cost of time including working time and income. We ran regressions controlling for confounding factors, and found that these proxies for the opportunity cost of time were correlated positively with the probability of reporting wasting food. The last set of estimations focuses on life transitions between the first and third survey last waves and provides evidence supporting a causal relationship between the opportunity cost of time and food waste.