Religious beliefs and food waste prevention practices: mechanisms of divine and environmental awareness

ABSTRACT

Under the crisis of food and energy shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is emergently important to emphasize food waste prevention in the tourism and hospitality industry because people around the world have started traveling in the post-pandemic era. Based on norm activation model and individualism-collectivism, this study proposes a perspective of religious beliefs to conceptualize divine awareness (i.e. divine retribution and divine rewards) and environmental awareness (i.e. resource scarcity and eco-friendly) on the formation of food waste prevention practices. A total of 571 samples from Taiwan and 483 samples from the United States was collected. Both countries showed that religious beliefs improved divine retribution, divine rewards, and religious food waste prevention practices. Divine rewards enhanced tourists’ awareness of resource scarcity and eco-friendly, and resource scarcity led to religious food waste prevention practices. Interestingly, the effects of divine retribution on resource scarcity and eco-friendly were significant only in Taiwan.

在新冠肺炎疫情引发的粮食和能源短缺危机下, 强调旅游和酒店业的食物浪费预防迫在眉睫, 因为世界各地的人们已经开始在疫情后的时代旅行. 基于规范激活模型和个人主义-集体主义, 本研究提出了一个宗教信仰的视角, 以概念化神意识(即神的报应和神的奖赏)和环境意识(即资源稀缺和生态友好)对食物浪费预防实践的形成. 共采集了571份来自台湾的样本和483份来自美国的样本. 这两个国家都表明, 宗教信仰改善了神的报应、神的奖赏和宗教食物浪费预防做法. 神圣的奖励提高了游客对资源稀缺和生态友好的意识, 资源稀缺导致了宗教性的食物浪费预防做法. 有趣的是, 天谴对资源稀缺和生态友好的影响仅在台湾显著.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious beliefs
• food waste
• divine awareness
• environmental awareness
• food waste prevention practices
• eco-friendly

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

MOST108-2511-H-030-003-MY2