The Role of Local Governance in Mitigating Student Food Waste: Integrating AI and Sociology for Enhanced School Per-formance

This study aims to explore the role of local governance in reducing student food waste behavior and enhancing school performance, integrating perspectives from artificial intel-ligence (AI) and sociology. A large-scale survey is conducted to collect extensive data on school cafeteria consumption behaviors and related activities, which is analyzed using a Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN) model. The BPNN model effectively handles nonlinear relationships and reveals the complex interaction mechanisms between student behaviors and school performance. The results indicate a high positive correlation (0.75) between cafeteria size and student traffic fluctuations, suggesting that local governance should consider the impact of cafeteria size on student traffic when planning and con-structing school cafeterias to optimize resource allocation. Additionally, there is a positive correlation (0.8) between student traffic fluctuations and menu diversity, indicating that local policies can attract students and reduce food waste by adjusting menu diversity, thereby improving the efficiency of resource utilization in schools. Furthermore, psycho-logical and social factors such as personal values, lifestyle habits, social group pressure, and attitudes toward food significantly influence the level of food waste in school cafete-rias. This implies that local governance can change students' behaviors and reduce waste through education and community engagement initiatives. Besides analyzing food waste behaviors, this study also examines the impact of local governance on resource allocation, teacher development, and overall student behavior management. Based on the findings, the study proposes a series of local governance policy recommendations aimed at reduc-ing food waste and comprehensively enhancing school performance through optimized resource allocation, increased community involvement, and improved management effi-ciency.