The social impacts of products: a review

Abstract

Many agree that every product has economic, environmental, and social impacts on those who use and produce them. While environmental and economic impacts are well known and measures have been developed, our understanding of social impacts is still developing. While efforts have been made to identify social impacts, academics, and practitioners still disagree on which phenomena should be included, and few have focused on the impacts of products specifically compared with programs, policies, or other projects. The primary contribution of this review essay is to integrate scholarship from a wide array of social science and engineering disciplines that categorizes the social phenomena that are affected by products. Specifically, we identify social impacts and processes including population change, family, gender, education, stratification, employment, health and well-being, human rights, networks and communication, conflict and crime, and cultural identity/heritage. These categories are important because they can be used to inform academics and practitioners alike who are interested in creating products that generate positive social benefits for users.

Systematic Map of the Social Impact Assessment Field

“…As with the rest of the selected articles, most of these focus their literature review on the S-LCA methodology. The majority of these studies focus on the methodological weaknesses of S-LCA [10], such as the selection of impact criteria and indicators [5,11,30], identification of the system boundaries [48], the selection of inventory data, characterization and the weighting method used [32]. Two articles focus on the use of a systematic review to determine future research areas of research in S-LCA [49,50].…”

“…[10] 2018 Weaknesses of Social Lifecycle Assessment (S-LCA) by means of case study analysis [5] 2018 Identifications of social impacts of products [32] 2018…”

“…Among the different methods available for performing social assessments, social impact assessment (SIA) provides a method to assess the social impacts of a single process and/or plant related to a product or service, and it is often used in the context of development projects [4]. A social impact assessment is defined as "a systematic appraisal of impacts on the quality of life of persons and communities whose environment is affected by a proposed policy, plan, program or project" [5].…”

Integrating Social Impact Measures Into the Airship Design Process

“…One method of doing this is by using the social impact categories. In a study by Rainock et al (2018), 11 product social impact categories were gathered from product impact studies, case studies, social impact assessments, and other similar studies. The social impact categories identified by Rainock et al (2018) are: Stratification, Employment, Health, Human Rights, Networks and Communication, Conflict and Crime, Cultural Identity, Gender, Family, Population Change, Paid Work, and Education.…”

“…In a study by Rainock et al (2018), 11 product social impact categories were gathered from product impact studies, case studies, social impact assessments, and other similar studies. The social impact categories identified by Rainock et al (2018) are: Stratification, Employment, Health, Human Rights, Networks and Communication, Conflict and Crime, Cultural Identity, Gender, Family, Population Change, Paid Work, and Education. These social impact categories have been used by other researchers to better understand and predict the social impacts of engineered products (Stevenson et al, 2020;Ottosson et al, 2020).…”