Indicators in Social Life Cycle Assessment: A Review of Frameworks, Theories, and Empirical Experience

Abstract

Summary Industrial ecology (IE) and life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) are increasingly important in research, regulation, and corporate practice. However, the assessment of the social pillar is still at a developmental stage, because social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is fragmented and lacks a foundation on empirical experience. A critical reason is the absence of general standardized indicators that clearly reflect and measure businesses’ social impact along product life cycles and supply chains. Therefore, we systematically review trends, coherences, inconsistencies, and gaps in research on SLCA indicators across industry sectors. Overall, we find that researchers address a broad variety of sectors, but only few sectors receive sufficient empirical attention to draw reasonable conclusions while the field is additionally still largely an a‐theoretical one. Furthermore, researchers overlook important social core issues as they concentrate heavily on worker‐ and health‐related indicators. Therefore, we synthetize the most important indicators used in research as a step toward standardization (including critical challenges in applying these indicators and recommendations for their future development), highlight important trends and gaps (e.g., the focus on worker‐ and health‐related indicators and the a‐theoretical nature of the SLCA literature), and emphasize critical shortcomings in the SLCA field organized along the key phases of design, implementation, and evolution through which performance measurement approaches such as SLCA typically progress in their development and maturation. With this, we contribute to the maturation and establishment of the social pillar of LCSA and IE.

Social Life Cycle Approach as a Tool for Promoting the Market Uptake of Bio-Based Products from a Consumer Perspective

“…However, as emphasized by [10], unlike reputable methods for assessing environmental and economic performance with environmental life cycle assessment (ELCA) and life cycle costing (LCC), social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is still in the development phase, and therefore misses the necessary empirical experience [11]. This is due in part to the lack of standardized social indicators for social performance measurements.…”

“…The development of general SLCA indicators could provide organizations with relevant information to better understand those social factors that might influence their development over time [12]. This, in turn, would support empirical experience and accordingly contribute to the development of standardized LCSA constructs [10]. Moreover, the use of social indicators can assist decision makers in providing a fit-for-purpose social sustainability scheme, including standards, labels and certifications, based on the product-related impacts on the wellbeing of different stakeholders' categories [13].…”

“…We do this by focusing on a specific stakeholder category, namely consumers. This could help fill the gap concerning the overall lack of attention of SLCA research to stakeholder categories other than workers (see [10]). In this vein, SLCA is also a valuable tool for positioning a product in the market and to guide consumer purchases (see [16]).…”

“…Nonetheless, there is still a restricted number of contributions aimed at reviewing which social sustainability aspects are most relevant to consider throughout the SLCA. However, Kühnen and Hahn [10] recently reviewed trends, coherences, inconsistencies, and gaps in research on SLCA indicators across industry sectors. They found only a few sectors receiving adequate empirical attention to draw cautious conclusions that often neglect relevant social issues; this is because they focus mainly on worker-and health-related indicators.…”

Markets, Sustainability Management and Entrepreneurship

“…8.3), for example, inputs, outputs and sustainability-related impacts of a product system are compiled and evaluated throughout the entire life cycle of a product. While ecological LCAs are widespread and often already standardised, social LCAs are slowly beginning to develop as well (Arcese et al 2016;Kühnen and Hahn 2017). It is not enough, however, to simply assess performance.…”