Spatial patterns in food waste at the local level. A preliminary analysis for Italian data

Within the scope of its broader environmental strategy, the European Commission aims to halve per capita food waste by 2030. This medium-run objective might be especially hard to achieve in the presence of strong autocorrelation in food waste levels. This work investigates spatio-temporal persistency and spatial diffusion patterns in food waste at the local level, resorting to a NUTS 3 dataset for Italian provinces. The first step of the empirical analysis consists in the computation of the Moran Index and of the Theil Index. Subsequently, a dynamic spatial panel regression is proposed, controlling for socio-economic factors and treating both time lags and spatial spillovers explicitly. The results support the idea that food waste levels in Italian provinces are persistent over time and spatially related, thus calling for the design of locally tailored policy instruments.