Socio-Cultural Context of Intergenerational Attitudes and Behaviours Towards Household Food Waste

Household food waste (HFW) has significant economic, social and environmental implications and households are the largest contributors to annual total amount of food waste generated globally. While existing studies have extensively examined the scale and drivers of HFW, they have paid far less attention to understanding the attitudes and behaviours that underpin HFW practices. Food socialisation research highlights the family as the primary site for the transmission of food-related attitudes and behaviours across generations, yet this perspective has been rarely applied to HFW. Moreover, extant literature suggests that younger consumers tend to engage more in waste-generating behaviours but offers little explanation for why this occurs. Taken together, these gaps indicate that our understanding of how intergenerational and sociocultural factors shape HFW attitudes and behaviours remains limited. My thesis addresses these gaps by exploring parent to child intergenerational transmission of food consumption related attitudes and behaviours within two different cultural contexts. Using an interpretive approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 parent-adult child dyads consisting of white British and black Nigerian and Nigerian immigrant participants responsible for the work of feeding their families. Using a combination of socialisation theory and Bronfenbrenner’s ecosystems framework, my findings show that the HFW attitudes and behaviours of the adult children participants were shaped by the complex interaction between sociocultural forces exerting varying levels of influence in the wider environment and parental intergenerational influence which reflected either a continuation, modification or discontinuation of attitudes and behaviours. Continuities reflected a commitment to similar parental orientations while modified behaviours emerged due to differences in implementation approaches. Discontinuities arose due to either an outright rejection of parental influence or the non-translation of transmitted attitudes to behaviours in response to contextual constraints like infrastructural barriers, special dietary needs and changes in the food environment. This confirmed the dynamic and contextual nature of intergenerational transmission. These findings advance understanding of the dynamics of parent and adult child socialisation in the food domain by demonstrating the heterogeneity of the familial socialisation process and offering a more nuanced perspective of how food consumption related attitudes and behaviours are learned and evolve. By situating HFW attitudes and behaviours within intergenerational and sociocultural contexts, my thesis contributes to a more holistic understanding of HFW.