Our results suggest that caution is necessary in arousing negative emotions as a way of influencing behaviour. We would argue against using a purely negative approach that focuses on communicating the costs and negative implications of food waste. Our results suggest that while this sort of approach may be successful in increasing intention to reduce food waste it may not be successful in encouraging actual decreases in food waste behaviour. Indeed, it may be that by arousing negative emotions in an intervention approach, change agents may actually be doing more harm than good and may result in increases in food waste behaviour. This finding also has implications for pro-environmental behaviour campaigns outside of food waste especially by pressure groups who often have negative campaigns.