Credit: Sarah Galvin
The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1985) posits that an individual’s behavior is predicted by behavioral intention, which is in turn influenced by three other specific components. The first component is attitude towards behavior, which are the “beliefs about the likely outcomes of the behavior and the evaluations of these outcomes”. The second component is subjective norms, which are the “beliefs about the normative expectations of others and motivation to comply with these expectations”. The third component is perceived behavioral control, which are the “beliefs about the presence of factors that may facilitate or impede performance of the behavior and the perceived power of these factors”.
Recently, the TPB has been used in numerous studies to explain food waste behavior (e.g., Sigurðardóttir, 2017; Graham-Rowe, Jessop, & Sparks, 2015; Mondéjar-Jiménez, Ferrari, Secondi, & Principato, 2016). Individuals are more likely to minimize food wastage when one has a positive attitude toward reducing food wastage, when significant others think that reducing food wastage is an appropriate behavior, and when one has the knowledge and capability to reduce food wastage (Sigurðardóttir, 2017). A more complete example of how Ajzen’s (1985) TPB model could be adapted to explain food waste behavior is illustrated in the figure below.
