Speaker
Description
Mohamad AlNajem1 and Omer Gibreel 2
1 Business Administration Department, College of Business Administration
Gulf University for Science & Technology
Kuwait
alnajem.m@gust.edu.kw
2 Accounting & Management Information Systems Department
Gulf University for Science & Technology
Kuwait
gibreel.o@gust.edu.kw
Abstract. This study aims to evaluate graduate and undergraduate students' food waste prevention behavior in Kuwait. The study focuses on examining the role of social media in influencing students' behavior towards food waste prevention. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was employed to assess students' behavior towards food waste prevention. Survey question-naires were distributed to undergraduate and graduate students, after clean-ing the survey from the 237 respondents, we were left with 210. The study employed SmartPLS to explore 4 major constructs namely Social media us-age, personal norms, subjective norms, and personal attitudes and their ef-fect on actual food prevention.
The study reveals that exposure to social media links, posts, and activities related to food waste prevention significantly supports the actual preven-tion of food waste in Kuwait. Additionally, other variables explored in this study, such as personal norms, subjective norms, and personal attitudes, al-so have a significant impact on the actual prevention of food waste.
This study offers insights to policymakers and institutions in Kuwait to adopt the finding of this study to initiate awareness campaigns and imple-ment strategic practices to educate people about the importance of prevent-ing and mitigating food waste. To the author's knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to evaluate food waste prevention and behavior among students in Kuwait.
Keywords: Circular Economy, Food Waste Prevention, Developing Coun-tries, Theory of Planned Behavior, SDG 12, Responsible Production and Consumption, Social Media, Digital Engagement.
