Widening the scope of responsible innovation: food waste and the role of consumers

Abstract

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) scholars often emphasise the distributed nature of innovation, but RRI generally targets researchers or innovators (or their organisations). Can we, within an RRI approach, expect consumers to be more active innovation agents and to be held more responsible for driving innovation in the right direction? To explore this question, we studied the societal challenge of food waste. We designed a study consisting of three world cafés to explore consumer perceptions of their own responsibility to engage with the food value chain to innovate to reduce food waste and complemented this with questionnaires. We found that the consumers in this study conceptualise their responsibilities in a passive way, not using current possibilities for communication with food companies. More open and interactive industry-led engagement processes are needed. This requires building competence and capacity to increase such engagement.