{
  "abstract": "Food waste contributes significant environmental impact and reducing household food waste remains a key priority. Yet, complexity of behaviours involved in household food waste remains understudied. This study aims to understand barriers and drivers of households’ capability, opportunity and motivation to reduce food waste, in order to contribute to better and more targeted policy interventions. We use a combined inductive-deductive thematic analysis approach, drawing on two theoretical frameworks, the Capability-Opportunity-Motivation-Behavioural model (COM-B) with the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to analyse semi-structured interview data of 30 Swedish households. Findings suggest that all households report to actively engage in behaviours to reduce food waste; these can be everything from a shared grocery list or taking care of leftovers. However, households report barriers in particular related to capability, such as knowing what is needed to further reduce food waste and understanding the consequences of food waste reduction, and to opportunity, including social influences to reduce food waste and environmental resources and context, for example, time constraints amid the many other demands of everyday life. This implies that policy interventions for reducing household food waste should help them to overcome barriers of time constraints, provide them with social influences within and outside the household, and strengthen their behavioural regulation",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Department of Energy and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 7032, Uppsala, SE-75007, Sweden; Corresponding author.",
    "Stockholm Environment Institute, Virkesvägen 1a, Stockholm, 12030, Sweden",
    "Department of Energy and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 7032, Uppsala, SE-75007, Sweden",
    "Stockholm Environment Institute, Virkesvägen 1a, Stockholm, 12030, Sweden; Division of Industrial Design, Department of Design Sciences, Lund University, Box 118, Lund, 22100, Sweden"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Ylva Ran"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Fiona Lambe"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Runa Halvarsson"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Alexandra Fransson"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Christopher Malefors"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/e7r7nam4ygf4t.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1016/j.fufo.2026.101222",
  "fulltext_url": "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666833526003229",
  "id": "e7r7nam4ygf4t",
  "issns": [
    "2666-8335"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fufo.2026.101222",
  "language": "en",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "lcc",
      "TP368-456"
    ],
    [
      "lcc",
      "TX341-641"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1106|Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221520891",
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-30",
  "publisher": "Elsevier",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/e7r7nam4ygf4t.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T13:44:33Z",
      "native_id": "90626f6460b644628408f4880b1b9f69",
      "source": "doaj",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fufo.2026.101222"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "lcc:TX341-641",
      "subfield": "nutrition"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Motivated to reduce food waste, unsure how: A qualitative study of household food waste behaviour",
  "title_text": "Motivated to reduce food waste, unsure how: A qualitative study of household food waste behaviour",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T13:44:33Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/e7r7nam4ygf4t",
  "venue": "Future Foods",
  "versions": []
}