Food Waste Reduction from Customers’ Plates: Applying the Norm Activation Model in South Korean Context

Researchers have pointed out the urgent need to tackle food waste from customers’ plates, considering its environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Nonetheless, little is known about reducing food waste from customers’ plates in the restaurant context. The present research successfully addressed how customers can reduce food waste by using the Norm Activation Model (NAM). A customer survey was employed to collect quantitative data to verify the hypotheses of this study. The NAM of this study involved awareness of environmental impact (of the restaurant industry), ascribed responsibility for food waste, and moral norm for food waste reduction as predictors for food waste reduction intention. In addition, this study adopted self-efficacy to food waste reduction as a moderator on the path from the moral norm for food waste reduction to food waste reduction intention. Our empirical results supported all the hypotheses suggested in the research model. Consequently, the findings of this study adequately explained how restaurant customers form their intention to reduce food waste and thus provided important clues about how it can be encouraged. For example, based on the findings, a nudging message may be displayed on the restaurant wall to raise customers’ self-efficacy, saying, “Saving the earth is as easy as finishing your food or taking it home”.

The distinct moral importance of acting together

This review essay engages with Garrett Cullity’s argument that there is a fundamental moral norm of cooperation, as articulated in Concern, Respect, & Cooperation (2018). That is to say that there is moral reason to participatein collective endeavours that cannot be reduced to other moral reasons like promoting welfare. If this is plausible, all the better for solving collective action dilemmas like climate change. But how should we understand a reason of participation? I supplement Cullity’s own account by appealing to the notion of ‘team reasoning’ in game theory. Even if not an adequate notion of rationality, adopting the team stance—deriving individual reasonto act from what a group may together achieve—may well have distinct moral importance.

Predicting donors’ behavior in contributing to health compared to non-health sectors: an application of revised theory of planned behavior in Iran

Purpose This study aims to predict the behavior of donors to give to the health sector compared with other sectors in Shiraz city, South Iran, using the revised theory of planned behavior (TPB). Design/methodology/approach This was a descriptive-analytic cross-sectional study. A standard questionnaire, which comprising 32 items, was used to survey 277 donors affiliated with various charitable associations in the city of Shiraz, South of Iran, in 2018. Participants were selected using stratified sampling and simple random sampling techniques. The authors used a revised TPB, a general model to predict and explain behavior across various types of behaviors and predict behavior based on an individual’s attitudes and beliefs. This model was used to examine the influence of eight social-psychological variables (attitude, perceived behavioral control [PBC], subjective norm, descriptive norm, moral norm, past behavior, intention behavior, self-reported) on an individual’s intention to donate to health sector charity. Data was analyzed using SPSS software version 22.0. Findings The score of all constructs of TPB in the health sector was significantly higher than in the non-health sector (P < 0.001), except for the PBC. This indicates that it does not influence the donors’ behavioral intention in selecting of charitable activity domains (e.g. health and non-health). The constructs of the moral norm, descriptive norm and past behavior in the health sector donors; and the constructs of attitude, moral norms and the variables of the annual income, and work experience in the non-health sector donors were identified as significant predictors of donors’ intention behavior. Moreover, attitude, moral norm, descriptive norm, past behavior, male gender and the annual income were the significant predictors of donors’ intention to give to health charity initiatives. Originality/value One of the most important mechanisms to compensate for the shortage of resources of the health system is the use of donors’ participation capacity. However, different donors act differently in selecting charitable activity domains, including the health sector and non-health sector (e.g. school-building donors’ association, house-building donors’ association, city-building donors’ association, library-building donors’ association, etc.). To attract donors’ participation in the health sector, some interventions to change the behavioral intention of donors towards the health sector through constructs of TPB should be taken.

Predicting locally grown food purchase intention of domestic and international undergraduate hospitality management students at a Canadian University

PurposeThis study aims to investigate how domestic and international undergraduate students from a university in Ontario, Canada, defined locally grown food and examined the factors behind their locally grown food purchase intentions.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaires were distributed in the School of Hospitality, Food, and Tourism Management undergraduate classes. A total of 196 complete surveys were returned. Using multiple regression analysis and theory of planned behavior (TPB) as a theoretical framework with an additional construct, moral norm, proposed hypotheses were tested.FindingsDomestic students narrowly defined locally grown food based on distance (e.g. food grown/raised within 100 km of where a person lives) compared to international students (e.g. food grown in Canada). The multiple regression analysis revealed that 36% of variance in purchase intention is explained by the four independent variables (i.e. student status, attitude, perceived product availability and moral norm), with perceived product availability as the strongest predictor of intention to purchase locally grown food.Research limitations/implicationsThe convenience sampling method limitations are as follows. First, the sample size was small for international students. Second, there was a possibility of underrepresentation of certain origins of international student populations. Third, the undergraduate respondents were from the School of Hospitality, Food and Tourism. Finally, another limitation is that the four variables in this study (i.e. attitudes, subjective norms, perceived product availability, and moral norm) only explained 36% of the variance of this model.Practical implicationsPerceived product availability, moral norm and attitude constructs positively influenced the locally grown food purchase intention. A perceived product availability construct revealed the strongest influence in locally grown food purchase intention of students. Particularly, five key questions were created based on the major research findings of this study, which can be used as a guideline for locally grown food providers and farmers when promoting locally grown food to students. These questions include: Where can I find it? When can I find it? Who grows it? How can I benefit others? Why is it good for me?Social implicationsThe results of this study shown that which factors influence locally grown food purchase intention of students. Hence, local restaurateurs and university dining facilities may incorporate these factors in their marketing message to serve students population better who might be interested in buying food products using locally grown ingredients. Research results also allow local farmers to communicate and inform their current and potential student consumers about the advantages of locally grown food. Overall, findings can contribute to economy and business of local community.Originality/valueCurrent research findings verified that there is a significant use of a moral norm construct to predict locally grown food purchase intention of students. The moral norm construct positively influenced the locally grown food purchase intention in this study, and this construct seemed useful to predict locally grown food purchase intention of students. Additionally, the research discovered that there were differences in domestic and international undergraduate students' perception in the locally grown food definition.

The Moral Norm, the Law, and the Limits of Protection for Wartime Medical Units

Based on ninety-nine interviews carried out with health professionals, this chapter briefly describes how the Syrian government transformed medical units into strategic targets. It then turns to discuss the legal advocacy strategy used by human rights and humanitarian organizations, claiming that while the law provides medical units with a series of protections, it also introduces crucial exceptions, setting out conditions under which warring parties can legally unleash violence against health facilities and staff. Even as accountability for the violation of international humanitarian law has been the primary rallying cry for NGOs seeking justice in Syria, the chapter argues that invoking the law to seek relief from violence is not necessarily the best strategy since the law itself sows doubt on the validity and solidity of the moral injunction to protect medical units.

Demandingness as an Objection to Norms

A moral requirement to be universally benevolent could be very demanding, i.e. it could take great sacrifices of the agent’s welfare to live up to it. It has been argued that this is an objection to its validity, but this is denied in this chapter. Any reasonable morality will comprise norms that are quite demanding, e.g. a norm to let ourselves be tortured to death when this is necessary to prevent a million or billion from suffering the same fate. However, the fact that a moral norm is demanding could mean that you are not blameworthy if you fail to comply with it. This fact could also be a pragmatic reason for you not to try to comply with this norm but with a less demanding norm if your failure to comply will have bad consequences.

Deontological foundations of selflessness

The article is a part of the broad current of the philosophy of responsibility. It analyses and describes the basic elements of human activity in the anthropological and ethical perspective. A particular feature discussed in the article is selflessness, which is analysed in the perspective of the main ethical currents. In personalistic philosophy, responsibility and selflessness result from the will, whereas in deontological philosophy they result from the moral norm adopted by the subject. The concept that describes the nature and fundamental elements of an act is the theory of supererogatory act. According to it, a selfless act is a free, conscious act resulting from the realization of a norm immanent to the subject.

Hearing God’s Command

When we claim that the command of God as a moral norm is rationally intelligible, we mean that it is in principle knowable, that we can reason about it, and that we can hold one another accountable to it. Barth’s theological ethics accommodates all three of these requisites. He holds that although we do not strictly know the specific action God will command, we have an approximate knowledge of it, and that in our asking it of God we stand in the space where it can be heard. He also holds that although our moral reasoning does not give us a definitive answer to what God requires and that we must bring our reasons before God’s ultimate verdict on them, the consideration of reasons for and against a proposed action or course of action is essential to hearing God’s command. Finally, he holds that human beings are bound to one another in relations of mutual speaking and hearing God’s commands, and these relations are at least implicitly relations of mutual accountability for what we hear as God’s command.

The Continuity of God’s Commands

For Barth, the command of God is a moral norm, which pertains to human action as such, and not only to a particular way of acting or form of life. As a moral norm, so understood, it should be rationally intelligible. A minimum condition of its rational intelligibility is its continuity from one instance of divine commanding to another. Yet Barth seems to deny the continuity of God’s commands by insisting that they are irreducibly particular requirements issued by God in distinct events of encounter with a human being. However, Barth also insists that particular commands are all specifications of what is finally the one command of God and that they thereby exhibit a formal consistency in their multiplicity. And he insists that God’s commands exhibit the constancy of what he takes to be the character or standards that will always pertain to them. Nevertheless, Barth’s effort to demonstrate the constancy of God’s commands fails, leaving him vulnerable to the charge that God’s particular commands are arbitrary.

The Command of God as a Moral Norm

Barth’s divine command ethics claims that God’s grace to human beings in Jesus Christ is the norm of human action. In Jesus Christ, God both poses and answers the question of the good of human action, which is the question of its conformity to grace. Rather than a norm of a distinctively Christian way of acting or form of life, Barth argues that this is a moral norm that pertains to human action as such. When moral philosophy considers the question of conformity to the good that is posed to human action, it implicitly attests the grace of God which poses this question. And when moral philosophy considers the answers to the question of the good that derive from reason or experience, it implicitly attests the grace of God as the answer to the question. In its explicit attestation of the grace of God as the norm of human action, theological ethics makes use of this implicit attestation in moral philosophy. Barth thus endorses the traditional position according to which theology articulates the moral norm with the assistance of philosophy. However, Barth’s claim that the norm of human action is a revealed norm, and not a rational norm that is clarified, specified, and extended by revelation, qualifies the goodness of the human creature, fails to secure the mutual accountability of those who are inside and outside the circle of revelation, and limits the grounds on which Christians and others cooperate with one another in moral endeavors.