Behavioral Strategies to Minimize Losses; Impact of Information Provision and Nudging on Tomato Loss Reduction at Retail Environment

Tomato, a widely consumed vegetable in Sri Lanka, faces losses that account for around 40% of its production along the supply chain. Despite efforts to reduce these losses, they persist, especially at the retailer level where a considerable portion of them occurs. Considering this, the study aimed to quantify the extent of tomato losses in the Sri Lankan retail market, identify practices employed by retailers to reduce losses, and determine what factors hinder the implementation of these practices. The ultimate goal was to assess the impact of information provision and nudging on tomato loss reduction. This was accomplished through a social experiment conducted with 27 retailers in the Kandy district of Sri Lanka for a period of 14 days. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t- tests, and regression analysis. During the quantification phase, it was identified that at the retailer stage, approximately 5% of total purchased tomatoes are lost daily per seller, resulting in an average daily monetary loss of LKR 472.75 per retailer when the average price of a kilogram of tomatoes is LKR 677.40. However, only 2% of the total purchased tomatoes were lost due to retailer mishandling. The rest were due to unavoidable losses that are consequences of the actions of upstream supply chain actors. The results further revealed that providing retailers with information on effective practices and nudging through comparing their monetary loss to a benchmark resulted in an overall reduction in tomato losses. Nevertheless, the response to this information varied among different retailers, implying that there are other factors that affect tomato losses at the retailer level and the adoption of good practices by retailers. When formulating food loss reduction strategies for supply chain actors, it is important to understand that their business objectives are not centered on minimizing food losses, but rather on mitigating monetary losses and improving customer retention. Therefore, it is crucial to emphasize the economic impact of these losses during interventions to motivate them to adopt the introduced strategies.