Hotel employees’ intention not to waste food: The role of environmental concern

Abstract

Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, the current research examined the effect of moral norms and injunctive norms on hotel employees’ intention not to waste food. Besides, the moderating role of environmental concern was also investigated. Data were collected from 586 food and beverage employees in Egyptian hotels, by quantile regression, which allows us to obtain results for the median individual and for those who are wasteful (below the median). The results show that developing moral and injunctive norms is helpful in reducing food expenditure in the median employee (q = 0.5). However, if the focus is on the most wasteful employee (q < 0.3), the way to reverse this behavior is to develop norms more related to what an employee should or should not do in relation to food waste (injunctive norms) and less related to the feeling of guilt (moral norms). In addition, general environmental concern increases the positive effect of injunctive norms on the intention not to waste food for the wasteful employees, which was not the case for the median employee. These results help to orient information and training policies for employees to reduce food waste in the hotel industry and, from a theoretical point of view, a novel analysis is carried out by comparing employees with different intentions to behave responsibly.