We employ a novel, comprehensive approach to behavior change that leverages interests in well-being, nature, and security for the purposes of promoting well-being in multiple areas of life at once. As an extension and expansion on our ongoing work with the City of Phoenix to reduce household food waste using a values-based multimedia educational intervention, we are partnering with Kaiteki, part of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings.

This follow-up study will leverage the most successful techniques from our initial research and the literature in a more targeted and refined intervention for specific low-income areas of Phoenix. We hypothesize that the values-based intervention will be effective at reducing food waste, even at a low-income level, that social and pressure to conform will contribute to reducing food waste, and that changes in participant attitudes and values regarding food will correlate to changes in food waste. We anticipate about 100 households to participate in a 5 week intervention in which we will ask them to weigh, record, and submit their food waste using materials and training we provide in an initial visit.

Participant attitudes, values, and knowledge regarding food will be assessed before and after the intervention using a unique assessment scale developed for this purpose, inspired by literature in environmental psychology. Participants will be divided into experimental and control groups to assess the effectiveness of our intervention materials, and will be compared using 2-way ANOVA and 2-way MANOVA for statistical analysis. We will also create a regression model to account for demographic and psycho-social characteristics. Finally, we will compare pre and post intervention anthropometrics. At the end of the intervention, we will be able to identify the most effective and translatable intervention techniques for changing participant attitudes, behaviors, and actual food waste.