Why richer, bigger households waste more food in urban Nigeria

Every plate of food that ends up in a household bin carries a hidden environmental bill. The water used to grow the crops, the energy spent on processing and transport, the land cleared for agriculture and the greenhouse gases released when organic matter decomposes in landfills all represent resources squandered twice over: once when the food was produced and again when it was thrown away. A new study from Enugu State, Nigeria, now offers one of the most detailed pictures yet of why urban households in sub-Saharan Africa waste food, and its findings challenge some common assumptions about who the wasters actually are.

The research, published in the journal Discover Sustainability, examined the influence of three factors on household food-wasting behaviour among urban households in Enugu State: environmental awareness, household income and family size. Led by Eunice Ifenyinwa Ugwu of the Department of Home Economics and Hospitality Management Education at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, the team set out to fill a stubborn evidence gap. While household food waste has been studied extensively in Europe, North America and parts of Asia, comparable data from sub-Saharan Africa remain scarce, even though the region’s rapidly urbanising cities are expected to become major drivers of global food demand and waste in the coming decades.

To build their dataset, the researchers conducted a cross-sectional survey of 239 urban households, selected using the Krejcie and Morgan procedure, a widely used statistical formula for determining sample size from a known population. The study was guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, a psychological framework that explains human action through attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. In this context, the theory predicts that a household’s intention to avoid or engage in food waste flows from what its members believe about the environment, what they perceive others around them to be doing, and how much control they feel they have over their food management practices.

The analysis combined three statistical techniques. Descriptive statistics painted the initial picture of food-wasting patterns across the surveyed households. Pearson product-moment correlation analysis then measured the strength and direction of the linear relationships between each predictor and food-wasting behaviour. Finally, partial least squares structural equation modelling, a technique well suited to testing complex networks of relationships between observed variables and latent constructs, allowed the team to test all three predictors simultaneously within a single structural model.

The results were striking in their symmetry. Environmental awareness significantly reduced household food-wasting behaviour: households whose members understood the environmental consequences of waste threw away measurably less food. Household income and family size, by contrast, both significantly increased food-wasting behaviour. Of the three predictors, household income emerged as the strongest, suggesting that the ability to buy more food than a household needs is a more powerful driver of waste than any attitudinal factor the study measured.

This pattern makes intuitive sense once the mechanics of household food management are considered. Wealthier households buy in larger quantities, purchase more perishable items, and can afford to discard food without a painful sense of loss. Larger families generate more leftovers, cook bigger meals with greater margins of error, and face more complex logistics in matching purchases to consumption. Awareness, meanwhile, acts as a brake: when household members grasp that wasted food means wasted water, energy and emissions, they appear to manage their kitchens more carefully.

The structural model explained a meaningful proportion of the variance in household food-wasting behaviour and demonstrated acceptable predictive relevance, the statistical benchmarks that indicate the model captures real relationships rather than noise. The authors argue that this finding carries a theoretical punch: behavioural and structural determinants operate simultaneously in shaping household food waste in rapidly urbanising settings. Attitudes alone do not explain waste, and neither do demographics alone; the two pathways interact.

Indeed, the study’s most significant theoretical contribution may be its extension of the Theory of Planned Behaviour itself. The classic framework traces behaviour through an attitudinal pathway, but the Enugu researchers explicitly incorporated structural household variables, income and family size, alongside that pathway. This hybrid model acknowledges that in developing economies, where food budgets are tight and household structures vary widely, purely psychological models of consumption may miss the material conditions that constrain or enable sustainable behaviour.

The practical recommendations that flow from the findings are correspondingly layered. The authors call for targeted environmental education that reaches households through channels they actually use, income-sensitive food management strategies that recognise wealthier households as priority targets for waste-reduction campaigns, and household-size-responsive interventions that help larger families plan purchases and meals more precisely. Improved food storage, redistribution programmes that channel surplus food to those who need it, and stronger policy support for Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, which targets halving global food waste by 2030, complete the package.

For Nigeria and comparable developing economies, the study offers a template for designing sustainable food systems and behavioural transition initiatives grounded in local evidence rather than imported assumptions. As urbanisation accelerates across Africa, the households of cities like Enugu will shape the continent’s food footprint. The message of this research is that changing that footprint will require both minds and structures to move together: raising awareness where it is low, and building food systems that make the sustainable choice the affordable one for every income level and family size.

Subject of Research: Predictors of household food-wasting behaviour among urban households in Enugu State, Nigeria

Article Title: Environmental awareness, household income and family size as predictors of household food-wasting behaviour among urban households in Enugu State, Nigeria

Article References: Ugwu, E. I., Attah, B. I., Ifeanyichukwu, I. O., Ezeaku, M. N., Madu, M. A., & Emeka, C. E. (2026). Environmental awareness, household income and family size as predictors of household food-wasting behaviour among urban households in Enugu State, Nigeria. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04955-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04955-3

Keywords: household food waste, environmental awareness, household income, family size, Enugu State, Nigeria, Theory of Planned Behaviour, structural equation modelling, sustainable consumption, SDG 12.3, food security, urbanisation