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Food waste occurs in every stage of the supply chain, but the value-added lost to waste is the highest when consumers waste food. The purpose of this paper is to understand the food waste behaviour of consumers to support policies for minimising food waste.

Using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a theoretical lens, the authors design a questionnaire that incorporates contextual factors to explain food waste behaviour. The authors test two models: base (four constructs of TPB) and extended (four constructs of TPB plus six contextual factors). The authors build partial least squares structural equation models to test the hypotheses.

The data confirm significant relationships between food waste and contextual factors such as motives, financial attitudes, planning routines, food surplus, social relationships and Ramadan.

The data comes from an agriculturally resource-constrained country: Qatar.

Food waste originating from various causes means more food should flow through the supply chains to reach consumers’ homes. Contextual factors identified in this work increase the explanatory power of the base model by 75 per cent.

Changing eating habits during certain periods of the year and food surplus have a strong impact on food waste behaviour.

A country is considered to be food secure if it can provide its citizens with stable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. The findings and conclusions inform and impact upon the development of food waste and food security policies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use, applicability and relevance of strategic planning as a process and tool when applied to exploring food security challenges, in the context of existing research on food security and food waste in the food supply chain. The issues associated with robust and resilient food supply chains within a circular economy are increasingly being seen as supportive of creating enhanced levels of food security but the authors argue that this is only sustainable when strategically planned as part of a cross-enterprise, information-rich and complex supply chain. The relevance of the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental (PESTLE) strategic planning tool is explored to establish whether it can play a role tacking the complexity of food insecurity (i.e. a lack of food security).

This is a viewpoint piece therefore as a result, thought, normative literature and supposition are used as a means to ground and orientate the views of the authors.

The authors identify and conclude that strategic planning tools like PESTLE across enterprises may not be relevant in supporting the reduction of food insecurity. This conclusion is predicated on the heightened level of complexity surrounding the pursuit of food security and the simplistic categorisation of PESTLE factors in a linear fashion that underpin this tool. Rather, the authors’ call for the use of strategic planning tools that are able to capture a large number of inter-related factors holistically.

This insight to the inter-related factors that contribute to food insecurity will allow policy developers, decision makers and others to develop their understanding of how strategic planning can support increased levels of food security within a circular economy and across cross-enterprises.

The authors contribute to the literature through a new insight of how normative strategic planning tools need to evolve in a complex, inter-connected world of international business and geo-politics. In doing so, it is expected that this research will motivate others to develop their line of enquiry around uncovering and exploring those inter-relationships connecting PESTLE factors.