Social Campaigns With Negative Emotional Drive as Possible Solution for Excessive Food Waste Problem
Social Campaigns With Negative Emotional Drive as Possible Solution for Excessive Food Waste Problem

Summary/Abstract: Food waste is considered one of the worldwide and society-wide environmental issues. Preventing food waste is one of the current priorities of the European Commission. Households in Slovakia produce about 400 kg of waste per capita every year and have a share of up to 53% in the generation of food waste in the country (per capita). The main reason for such behaviour is that consumers often do not see the problem and its impact on the environment. Other factors are consumerism and a deep-rooted indolent lifestyle. In the presented paper an emotional social marketing campaign (unrelated to food waste but with the related message) was analysed. A sample of 180 young adults watched the video, they evaluated it on the scales of semantic differential and answered several questions related to food waste and to their personal and psychological characteristics. The Mann Whitney U test was used for analysing the differences between chosen groups of respondents. It was found out that the negative emotional drive of the message in the campaign helped them realise the problem of food wasting. We consider a strong emotional content a possible way to present consumers with the current problems and also a possible help with their solution.

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