Abstract
Despite advances in the data, models, and methods underpinning environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), it remains challenging for practitioners to effectively communicate and interpret results. These shortcomings can bias decisions and hinder public acceptance for planning supported by LCA. This paper introduces a method for interpreting LCA results, the Argumentation Corrected Context Weighting-LCA (ArgCW-LCA), to overcome these barriers. ArgCW-LCA incorporates stakeholder preferences, corrects unjustified disagreements, and allows for the inclusion of non-environmental impacts (e.g., economic, social, etc.) using a novel weighting scheme and the application of multi-criteria decision analysis to provide transparent and context-relevant decision support. We illustrate the utility of the method through two case studies: a hypothetical decision regarding energy production and a real-world decision regarding polyphenol extraction technologies. In each case, we surveyed a relevant stakeholder group on their environmental views and fed their responses into the model to provide decision support that is relevant to their perspective. We found marked differences between results using ArgCW-LCA and results from a conventional analysis using an equal-weighting scheme, as well as differentiation between stakeholder preference groups, indicating the importance of applying the perspective of the particular stakeholder group. For instance, there was a rank reversal of alternatives when comparing between an equal weighting approach for all environmental and economic dimensions and ArgCW-LCA. ArgCW-LCA provides opportunity for both public and private sector incorporation of LCA, such as in developing enlightened stakeholder value measures. This is achieved through enabling the LCA practition to provide public and private actors’ interpreted LCA results in a manner that incorporates educated stakeholder perspectives. Furthermore, the method encourages stakeholder multiplicity through participatory design and policymaking that can enhance public backing of actions that can make society more sustainable.
Highlights
Effective communication of life cycle assessment (LCA) results to non-technical audiences remains an ongoing challenge [1]
The methodology is comprised of six-steps: (i) collecting stakeholder perspectives, (ii) transforming perspectives to weights, (iii) assessing stakeholder accord, (iv) applying argumentation to divergent perspectives, (v) calculation and calibration of weights, and (vi) application of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) (Figure 1)
The rankings made by the individual respondents were converted using rank order centroid (ROC) to weightings
Summary
Effective communication of life cycle assessment (LCA) results to non-technical audiences remains an ongoing challenge [1]. As LCA is increasingly applied outside of academia, in policy making and cross-sector planning, practitioners need appropriate methods to convey results to audiences without intimate knowledge of LCA [2]. In the past, they have commonly resorted to endpoint indicators that frame impacts in terms of broad societal concerns, such as damage to ecosystems, resource depletion, and human health. This is in effect a subjective ‘binary’ weighting that can induce burden shifting, e.g., the optimization of the carbon footprint leading to increases in ecotoxicity [5,7]
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