| dc.description.abstract | This thesis sets out to investigate the factors that challenge a reduction of food waste within households of young adults in Norway. Food wastage is one of the biggest barriers to ensuring a sustainable food system, with massive implications for the environment, food security and economy. In Norway, national mappings reveal that young adults are the least concerned about food waste, and have also reduced their levels of food waste less than other age groups. By examining the factors challenging a reduction of household food waste, this thesis seeks to bring about an understanding of the structures and motivations driving food waste practices and perceptions within this group of consumers. The research question for this study was: What are the barriers to reducing household food waste among young adults? To support this main question I ask two guiding sub-questions: i: How do young adults perceive food waste and the argumentation used to reduce it? ii: What are the structures driving food waste perceptions and practices among young adults? The data for this study was collected through a qualitative research approach including a combination of conversations and semi-structured interviews, participant observation and self-reporting of food waste related practices in 20 households of families, couples and singles between 20 – 40 years of age in Fredrikstad, Norway. Findings are analyzed and discussed within the framework of modernity, social practice and cultural meanings. The barriers to reduce food waste among these consumers are connected to structural and contextual elements, knowledge and alienation, control mechanisms, modern expectations, and cultural meanings of food. Important constraints for food waste reduction within this group proved to be co-existing mentalities, a need for order, as well as deficient recognition of food waste as a conscious consumer effort and structures facilitating the habit of overconsumption. These constraints diminish the sense of consumer responsibility, leading to prioritizing of other close and distant concerns. | eng |