Research On The Impact Of Message Framing And Reference Points On Consumers’ Plate Food Waste

Cost control is an important part of enterprise management,for which reducing operating costs to achieve increased benefits has become a key strategy for hotels’ competitive advantages enhancement.Plate food waste situation is severe in recent years,which brings challenges to the hotel buffet service operation.Since the lack of problem cognition and responsibility awareness accounts for the consumption of plate waste,information intervention Information intervention,as an intervention measure for sustainable marketing,has become an economical and easy way for enterprises providing catering services such as hotels to take,so as to persuade consumers to reduce food waste effectively.Enterprises not only pay attention to the usefulness of information intervention,but also pay more attention to the communication efficiency and persuasion effect of intervention information.Message framing and reference points are common information construction and expression skill.Therefore,for the research aimed at reducing food waste for hotel buffets,whether information intervention can enhance consumers’ intention to reduce plate food waste and reduce the amount of their wasted food usefully,how message framing affect the consumers’ intention to reduce plate food waste and what is the influence mechanism and action path of message framing adjusted by reference points on consumers’ plate food waste have become the focus of our study.Combining theoretical research and experimental research,three experiments are designed according to the research objectives and conducted in the cafeteria of Y hotel to investigate whether information intervention affects consumers’ intention to reduce plate food waste and the actual amount of food waste respectively,studying how message framing(loss or gain framed)affect their attitude and intention to reduce food waste,what’s the role that attitude plays in the influence of message framing on consumers’ intention to reduce food waste,and what is the mechanism by which message frames(loss or gain framed)and reference points(self-referencing and "self-other"-referencing)are matched to influence consumers’ intention to reduce waste by analysis of variance and Bootstrap method.Results show that information intervention can reduce the amount of food waste of consumers.Also,the type of message framing has a significant effect on consumers’ attitude and intention to reduce food waste.Compared with the gain framed message,the loss framed is more convincing to persuade consumers to reduce waste.Besides,attitude plays a mediating role in the influence of message framing on consumers’ intention to reduce food waste.In addition,reference points can modulate the impact of message framing on consumers’ attitudes and intention to reduce food waste.Specifically,loss framed message makes consumers have stronger attitude and intention to reduce food waste in self-referential message,gain framed message makes consumers have stronger attitude and intention to reduce food waste in “selfother”-referential message.Meanwhile,the mediating effect of attitude on the effect of message framing on consumers’ intention to reduce food waste is moderated by reference points.In order to improve the management level of consumers’ plate food waste behavior,so as to realize cost saving,and promote the construction of sustainable consumption mode of the whole society,the following suggestions are put forward.First,emphasizing the importance of information intervention.Second,priority should be given to the use of intervention information constructed by loss frame to improve the communication and persuasion efficiency of marketing intervention.Third,the matching effect between reference point and message framing should be fully understood,the matching between loss framed and self-referencing together with the matching between gain framed and "self-other" referencing are more convincing to enhance consumers’ attitude and intention to reduce food waste,based on which more effective information strategies can be constructed.