The Morality of Food Wasting Behaviour. A Theory-Driven Approach

People often view food wasting behavior as immoral. The underlying reasons for this belief remain unclear, as previous studies have relied on folk conceptions of morality and mixed them with other constructs. In this project, we systematically examine the relationship between morality and food-wasting behavior by operationalizing morality through the Morality-as-Cooperation framework. Across two studies, we compared folk moral intuitions with theory-driven moral principles. The results show only mild overlap between the two. While those who judged food waste as immoral were less likely to waste food, this relationship was particularly strong among individuals who viewed food waste as a violation of the Fairness moral domain (fair division of resources). Our findings provide a theoretical benchmark for future research and offer insights for environmental campaigns or food waste interventions.