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Assessing the validity of impact pathways for child labour and well-being in social life cycle assessment

  • SOCIETAL LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
  • Published:
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Abstract

Background, aim and scope

Assuming that the goal of social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is to assess damage and benefits on its ‘area of protection’ (AoP) as accurately as possible, it follows that the impact pathways, describing the cause effect relationship between indicator and the AoP, should have a consistent theoretical foundation so the inventory results can be associated with a predictable damage or benefit to the AoP. This article uses two concrete examples from the work on SLCA to analyse to what extent this is the case in current practice. One considers whether indicators included in SLCA approaches can validly assess impacts on the well-being of the stakeholder, whereas the other example addresses whether the ‘incidence of child labour’ is a valid measure for impacts on the AoPs.

Materials and methods

The theoretical basis for the impact pathway between the relevant indicators and the AoPs is analysed drawing on research from relevant scientific fields.

Results

The examples show a lack of valid impact pathways in both examples. The first example shows that depending on the definition of ‘well-being’, the assessment of impacts on well-being of the stakeholder cannot be performed exclusively with the type of indicators which are presently used in SLCA approaches. The second example shows that the mere fact that a child is working tells little about how this may damage or benefit the AoPs, implying that the normally used indicator; ‘incidence of child labour’ lacks validity in relation to predicting damage or benefit on the AoPs of SLCA.

Discussion

New indicators are proposed to mitigate the problem of invalid impact pathways. However, several problems arise relating to difficulties in getting data, the usability of the new indicators in management situations, and, in relation to example one, boundary setting issues.

Conclusions

The article shows that it is possible to assess the validity of the impact pathways in SLCA. It thereby point to the possibility of utilising the same framework that underpins the environmental LCA in this regard. It also shows that in relation to both of the specific examples investigated, the validity of the impact pathways may be improved by adopting other indicators, which does, however, come with a considerable ‘price’.

Recommendations and perspectives

It is argued that there is a need for analysing impact pathways of other impact categories often included in SLCA in order to establish indicators that better reflect actual damage or benefit to the AoPs.

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Notes

  1. For earlier work on social aspects in LCA, see Benoît and Mazijn (2009); Klöpffer and Udo de Haes (2008); Jørgensen et al. (2008), (2009); Dreyer et al. (2006); Hunkeler (2006); Labuschagne and Brent (2006); Norris (2006); Weidema (2006); Gauthier (2005); Hunkeler and Rebitzer (2005); Schmidt et al. (2004); Klöpffer (2003). The reader may also refer to following sources: Earthster (2008); Flysjö (2006); Grießhammer et al. (2006); Manhart and Grieβhammer (2006); Nazarkina and Le Bocq (2006); Barthel et al. (2005); Méthot (2005); Spillemaeckers et al. (2004)

  2. AoP is a term originally defined in environmental LCA to represent the classes of environmental endpoints that society wants to protect (Udo de Haes et al. 1999)

  3. An assessment will in this article be defined as ‘valid’ if the assessment measures what we intend to measure. An assessment method is valid if it allows for valid assessments. The degree of validity in other words defines the correspondence between reality and the assessment result. Validity is not to be confused with ‘reliability’ which ‘merely’ relates to reproducibility or the degree to which the result will always be the same if the assessment method is applied on the same situation. An assessment method can thereby be highly reliable without being valid whereas the opposite is not possible (Carmines and Zeller 1979).

  4. A question which arises is how we can validly assess social impact pathways. For this to make sense, we have to make a series of assumptions about the social world. First of all, we have to assume that the social world is real and that it can be examined and communicated accurately. If not, it does not make sense to say that an assessment of the social world resembles accurately the reality of the social world. The social world is by other words in this SLCA framework assumed real, measurable, communicable and independent of our measurements.

    It does not serve the purpose of this article to discuss these positions towards the nature of the social world in any depth but we will however mention that opposite viewpoints are widespread throughout academia implying that several research paradigms within the social sciences would contest these assumptions. See for example Burrell and Morgan (1979) for a discussion of different research paradigms within the social sciences.

  5. Many different but reasonably related definitions of this construct can be found. See for example Galloway (2006) for an overview.

  6. See also Martel and Dupuis (2006); Galloway (2006); Diener and Biswas-Diener (2002); Diener et al. (2002); Schalock et al. (2002); Michalos (2001); Cummins (2000); Felce and Perry (1996); Carley (1981)

  7. The mentioned literature deals with several different and closely related constructs. SWB is in some cases mentioned together with the term (subjective) ‘quality of life’, which by some is seen as identical to SWB and by some is seen as a broader construct. This article will utilise experience gained on ‘quality of life’ research without making a distinction between the terms when they are used in reasonably similar ways.

  8. Several studies have been made addressing the consequences of discrimination (Williams (1999), Williams and Williams-Morris (2000)), yet, these studies relate to impacts of racial discrimination experienced in all parts of the everyday life and thus seem in many ways to differ from the impacts that may be suspected to affect children that are not paid as much as their elder colleagues, for example because wage discrimination only relates to the working life and because it only relates to a limited period of the person’s life. Thus simply assuming that the consequences of discrimination are also true for wage discrimination among children seems somewhat dubious.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Produktionstorvet 426, 2800, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

    Andreas Jørgensen & Michael Z. Hauschild

  2. School of Psychology, Faculty of Health, Medicine, Nursing and Behavioural Sciences, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria, 3125, Australia

    Lufanna C. H. Lai

Authors
  1. Andreas Jørgensen
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  2. Lufanna C. H. Lai
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  3. Michael Z. Hauschild
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Correspondence to Andreas Jørgensen.

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Responsible editor: Andreas Ciroth

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Jørgensen, A., Lai, L.C.H. & Hauschild, M.Z. Assessing the validity of impact pathways for child labour and well-being in social life cycle assessment. Int J Life Cycle Assess 15, 5–16 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-009-0131-3

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