管理科学系学术讲座

时间：2023年7月20日（周四） 10:00-11:30

地点：管理学院思源楼524室

主题：Seeing Beauty in Ugly Produce: A Food Waste Perspective

主讲人：胡斌德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校教授

主持人：吴肖乐复旦大学管理学院教授

摘要：Ugly produce refers to cosmetically-unconventional yet taste- and nutrition-wise perfectly edible produce. Advocates claim that selling retail ugly produce helps reduce food waste. Skeptics, however, argue that ugly produce meets alternative demands where cosmetic appearance is unimportant, e.g., restaurants and processed-food companies, rather than being wasted. Given such alternative demands, how does retail ugly produce impact food waste? We model an agricultural cooperative producing, pricing and selling produce to a retailer and an alternative buyer, and find that the retailer selling ugly produce indeed strictly reduces food waste. However, convincing the retailer to carry ugly produce as a strategy to reduce food waste may be challenging because it generally reduces the retailer’s profit, which explains conventional grocery chains’ hesitancy to carry ugly produce. Fortunately, we also show that a dedicated ugly produce retailer competing with a conventional retailer yields the same reduction in food waste. Therefore, whereas conventional retailers could but would not carry ugly produce and reduce food waste, ugly produce startups step up to the task and save the day. Finally, we confirm the robustness of our core insights in three model extensions. This research sheds light on the ongoing debate about whether retail ugly produce actually reduces food waste and helps explain the development of the ugly produce movement. Our findings also highlight the sustainability value of emerging ugly produce startups and inform the collaboration strategies of non-profit organizations with farmers and/or retailers to reduce food waste and combat global hunger and climate change.

主讲人简介：Dr. Bin Hu is Professor of Operations Management in the Naveen Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received a PhD degree in Business Administration from the University of Michigan in 2011, and a BS degree in Mathematics from Peking University in 2005. Before joining UT Dallas in 2018, he taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Hu’s research interest is in supply chain management, procurement and sourcing, and innovative operations, and primarily employs analytical economic, game-theoretic, and optimization models in his research. He currently serves as Associate Editor for Management Science and Naval Research Logistics, and Senior Editor for Production and Operations Management.