Norway's Food Waste Reduction Governance: From Industry Self-Regulation to Governmental Regulation?

Abstract

The scale of food waste across Europe is alarming, and its reduction has recently been identified as an important public policy issue. However, effective solutions require initiative and action both from the government and the food industry. What are the drivers of industry self-regulation in this area? We provide an in-depth analysis of the emergence and evolution of Norway's food waste reduction governance. In 2017, food sector companies signed a Voluntary Industry Agreement on food waste reduction, but as of 2021, a shift towards a binding law is increasingly likely. With outcome-explaining process tracing, we test three hypotheses, identifying causal factors and mechanisms that explain the emergence of the Agreement, and apply a typology of (self-)regulation to show how different actors and mechanisms played an important role in different phases of the process. We find that, initially, food waste reduction governance was clearly industry-led. However, societal and political pressure was necessary for institutionalizing self-regulation and its timing. We also note that despite Norway's tradition for co-regulation, in the wake of the Agreement, lawmakers continued to pressure the government for a binding law, with a clear move from initial industry self-regulation towards state-steered regulation.