Policies Against Food-Waste: Experiment to be placed in Wave 12 of the Swiss Environmental Panel (SEP)
Creators: name: Bernauer, Thomas
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Science and Technology Studies
subject: Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
subject: Environmental Studies
subject: Political Science
subject: FOS: Political science
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Food Studies

description: Most broadly, this experiment probes into the Swiss resident population’s attitudes and preferences concerning policies to reduce (avoidable) food waste (to be called “food losses” or “avoidable food losses” in order to minimize social desirability bias). In Wave 3 of the SEP (implemented in summer 2019), one finding was that the Swiss resident population was surprisingly supportive of policies in that domain, even if such policies implicated substantial additional costs to consumers. One key publication from the respective survey experiment concluded (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00460-8): “Stricter regulation of food waste reduction is widely presumed to increase food prices, which could render its implementation politically unfeasible. Here we empirically tested whether specific policy framing, design and feedback could help ensure public support despite potential food price increases. We used survey experiments with 3,329 citizens from a high-income country, Switzerland. A combined framing and conjoint experiment shows that messages emphasizing national or international social norms in favour of reducing food waste (policy framing) can increase public support for more ambitious reduction targets. Also, most citizens support food waste regulation even if this leads to substantial increases in food prices, but only if such policies set stringent reduction targets and are transparently monitored (policy design). Finally, a vignette experiment reveals that voluntary industry initiatives do not crowd out individuals’ support for stricter governmental regulation, but potentially crowd in support if industry initiatives are unambitious (policy feedback).” In the meantime, the Swiss government adopted an Action Plan (AP) in 2022. Its goal is to reduce avoidable food waste/losses by half until 2030, compared to 2017 levels. The AP is structured in two phases, with the first phase (2022-2025) being based on voluntary sectoral agreements between the food sector and the government, to be followed by an assessment of the first phase and additional measures to be decided on for the second phase – though it remains very much open what such measures in the second phase could or should be). This policy-making structure follows the logic of policy sequencing. Much like in other policy domains, policy sequencing concerning food waste policy is motivated by two considerations. First, starting with voluntary, bottom-up measures in a pledge and review mode is regarded as efficient in a technocratic sense. The food sector has more information than government about what the low hanging fruits in terms of reducing food waste/losses are – i.e., how to reduce food waste in ways that reduce the most food waste at the least possible cost to industry and consumers. Closely observing this process, in turn, allows both government and industry to learn more about bottlenecks in reducing food waste and how to overcome such obstacles. The initial voluntary process also helps government obtain information on who the more willing and engaged and who the less willing and engaged actors (e.g., firms, restaurants, private households) are, and what motivates them to behave in one way or another. It also allows for ex ante assessment of what potential follow-up measures could help in reducing food waste, particularly amongst the laggard actors. The second consideration is political. In view of considerable uncertainty about “marginal abatement costs curves” – i.e., costs of reducing the additional amount of food waste as such reduction progresses from the status quo in 2017 to 50% of 2017 levels by 2030 – industry (in this case the food sector) commonly opposes new government regulation or attempts to soften any new regulation with loopholes, exemptions, long time-lines, etc. Also, industry skepticism or opposition up front can easily spill over into mass public opinion on new regulation in the respective policy domain, to the extent the public (citizens, consumers) starts to worry about new regulation causing increased consumer prices. This concern is likely to play a role particularly at times when inflation is above normal, as is currently the case in Switzerland. The scientific literature on policy sequencing (references to be added) has focused largely on mapping policy sequences and describing and interpreting common patterns in such sequencing, e.g., in climate policy, and carbon pricing in particular. One insight from this literature, which is rather unsurprising, is that policies commonly tend to develop from voluntary, less stringent, and less costly to more mandatory, more stringent, and more costly measures. In the present survey experiment, we are interested in better understanding the citizen/consumer-level assumptions that are inherent in the policy sequencing literature, but have not been systematically examined to date. Understanding how citizens form their policy preferences in response to sequenced policy-making is crucial, because this is very much part of the learning process that motivates policy sequencing. We are particularly interested in the following issue in this respect. The policy sequencing literature assumes that it is politically easier to start with “softer”, voluntary measures before moving to “harder”, mandatory (government mandated) measures. This assumption presumes some form of cost-perception and/or habituation effect on the part of industry and consumers/citizens. That is, policy interventions that result in immediate/direct and substantial costs, but result in longer term and hard to quantify benefits are likely to meet public and stakeholder resistance. Policy sequencing that starts with “softer” measures can thus help in limiting initial costs implications, raising awareness of longer-term benefits, and getting the public and stakeholders used. It may also create policy feedback effects, in the sense of creating beneficiaries of the initial policy (e.g. first movers in a given market) who then support efforts to ratchet up the level of government intervention. These presumptions might be too optimistic, however. One the one hand, if initial voluntary measures in a policy sequencing strategy perform at least moderately well there could be a saturation effect, resulting in low levels of acceptance of more ambitious policies, particularly mandatory government policies. Recent research has in fact shown that voluntary industry initiatives in the sustainability domain tend to reduce public demand for top-down government regulation. This implies that potentially even green window dressing efforts by industry might crowd out public demand for following up with stricter rules and standards. On the other hand, «motivated reasoning» could lead citizens who wanted mandatory government policy-interventions from the beginning, rather than policy sequencing from softer to harder measures, to still want such policies, irrespective of whether voluntary measures were effective or not. Conversely, those opposed to government intervention ex ante may still prefer voluntary measures and object to ratcheting up a given policy, irrespective of whether voluntary measures were effective or not. The experimental study design will help us assess whether the optimistic or pessimistic expectation is empirically more relevant. Several hypotheses (empirical expectations) can be derived from these arguments: 1. When respondents receive information on the food waste Action Plan (AP), their support for stricter, mandatory measures against food waste will be lower than support in the control group that receives no information on the AP. 2. When respondents receive information that the AP works well up to present, their support for voluntary measures beyond 2024/2025 will be higher. When respondents receive information that the AP is not performing well up to present, their support for stricter, mandatory measures beyond 2024/2025 will be higher. (Bayesian updating hypothesis) 3. Respondents with strong pro-market, weak pro-environment, and political middle-to-right orientation continue to support voluntary measures beyond 2024/2025 even when receiving information that voluntary measures are not performing well up to present. Respondents with strong pro-government/state, strong pro-environment, and political middle-to-left orientation continue to support stricter, mandatory measures after 2024/2025 even when receiving information that voluntary measures are performing well up to present. (Motivated reasoning hypothesis) The experiment is designed primarily to assess the effects of contemporaneous information on the performance (effectiveness) of voluntary measures on support for continued voluntary measures or stronger government intervention. We cannot assess habituation effects, whose study would require a before/after study design organized around a particular policy intervention. Another aspect we do not study explicitly here is the effect of variation in cost implications of particular measures to reduce food waste.