Analysis of human well-being as the area of protection in social life cycle assessment

HWB of relevance for S-LCA has been studied both within and beyond S-LCA literature. From an overarching perspective, HWB is considered in reviews in the S-LCA field, including the 2020 S-LCA guidelines (UNEP 2020), and outside of S-LCA literature in a review in development studies by Alkire (2002). In addition, several S-LCA and life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) approaches provide categories within HWB and in relation to IPs. This section outlines findings from these studies on HWB of S-LCA relevance.

Overarching perspectives on HWB in S-LCA literature are found in Subramanian et al.’s (2018) review on SLCA regarding among other AoP, Soltanpour et al.’s (2019) focus on societal processes, the treatment of AoP in the 2020 S-LCA guidelines (UNEP 2020), and Ugaya et al.’s (2023) review on S-LCA IP frameworks. Subramanian et al.’s (2018) review identified a considerable interest in defining the S-LCA AoP but limited explicit mentioning of the AoP used in the studies. Soltanpour et al. (2019) conceptually suggested a focus on societal processes at macro and meso scales as an AoP, although they recognised individual HWB as the ultimate AoP in IPs. The 2020 guidelines state that the usual definition of the S-LCA AoP is social well-being or HWB (UNEP 2020). Ugaya et al. (2023) covered 14 IP frameworks with a focus on the pathways before the AoP. Two AoPs, both aggregated, were identified: social justice and well-being. An endpoint level category is also briefly presented in the paper, based on a bottom-up synthesis and with similarities to but also considerable differences from the mentioned approach by Grisez et al. (1987). The studies on overarching HWB S-LCA perspectives illustrate the centrality of including HWB in the definition of the S-LCA AoP, that other terms are also suggested as part of the AoP, and a focus on the part of the IPs that are situated prior to the AoP.

Alkire (2002) compared a range of frameworks on HWB components, in the context of development studies but covering a broad range of academic disciplines. The study concluded that the mentioned approach by Grisez et al. (1987) is sufficiently close to seven other prominent frameworks for it to be used as a standard of HWB component approaches. Alkire’s paper highlights the broad support for defining HWB through a list of components.

Several AoP component sets and suggestions for how to assess them have been presented in relation to S-LCA, including Weidema’s (2006) quantification of HWB, Labuschagne and Brent’s (2006) definition focusing on a business and government perspective, Reitinger et al.’s (2011) assessment framework based on Grisez et al. (1987), and Steen and Palander’s (2016) derivation of assessment indicators using basic needs as a starting point. Weidema (2006) presented a framework with six AoP components: life and longevity; health; autonomy; safety, security, and tranquillity; equal opportunities; and participation and influence. A quantification of the components is provided, based on quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which is a summation of years of well-being loss, years lost due to disability, and years of life lost. The summation uses figures from the World Health Organization for mortality and non-lethal health impacts, author defined lists for some of the other components and with each list items based on sources such as the International Labour Organization, and author estimates for some components. Weidema highlighted the challenge of the full quantification. Labuschagne and Brent (2006) reviewed “current available frameworks, social impact assessment (SIA) guidelines, corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature and guidelines, and other international guidelines” (Labuschagne and Brent 2006, 4) to arrive at a life cycle context definition of social sustainability as internal human resources, external population, macro social performance, and stakeholder participation. This definition can be seen as driven by businesses and governments and this can explain the apparent combination of ends and means. Reitinger et al. (2011) presented a model for S-LCIA largely using the AoP as the mentioned component set by Grisez et al. (1987), but with the addition of a component on fairness. Besides providing this component definition, Reitinger et al. focused on reasoning for taking as a starting point Amartya Sen’s consideration of HWB being humans functioning well and having freedom of choice, on why Grisez et al.’s component set aligns well with Sen’s perspective, and on testing the framework by reasoning about IPs in examples based on stakeholder categories used in S-LCA. Steen and Palander (2016) provided a component definition of sustainability for the S-LCA relevant context of LCSA. The components, being a synthesis of lists in documents on basic needs, are nourishment; water; oxygen; excretion; proper temp; body integrity; reproduction and sex; sleep and rest; movement; identity; planning; and love and attachment. The remainder of their paper focuses on listing and reasoning about satisfiers for these needs, safeguard subjects for the satisfiers, and indicators for assessing the safeguard subjects. The studies on AoP component sets illustrate the interest in using HWB component sets in an S-LCA context and the challenge of critically assessing such components while constructing and testing a complete framework. The studies also show that the development of frameworks was in particular carried out in the mid-2000s and the early 2010s.

The review was goal-oriented, and we identified the need for it to include the following: consideration of the complexities of social sustainability, critical studies leading to the identification of a set of tentative HWB components, and a synthesis of existing approaches. These requirements could be covered by combining core aspects of different established types of review: qualitative systematic review, realist review, and umbrella review (Paré et al. 2015). In a qualitative systematic review, search queries and a qualitative analysis of identified qualitative data are used. A realist review is a means for identifying a variety of aspects of complex issues, and therefore complements a systematic review. Finally, a meta-approach of synthesising already synthesised concepts is covered by an umbrella review.

The specific technique used in the review combines stepwise snowball sampling (Coyne 1997) with systematic searches (Paré et al. 2015). In snowball sampling, the researcher benefits from known and to the study closely related information sources, and follows connections to and from these sources. This focused search strategy is useful for finding publications that search queries may not identify when broad concepts, such as HWB, guide the study. Systematic searches were in our study primarily used to facilitate the identification of potential parallel bodies of relevant literature. The searches were primarily performed in the academic database Scopus and in Google Scholar. An inclusive approach was used regarding covering different styles of spelling the search terms. In cases with a high number of documents from the searches, the number of citations was used as a criterion when further searching for key texts among the documents. A total of 115 documents, whereof 82 academic journal articles, where studied beyond abstract scanning. The final analysis covers 59 documents, whereof 38 academic journal articles.

The scope of the literature study includes a range of disciplines, and in particular sustainability science, philosophy, psychology, and development studies. Our primary starting points were as follows: key S-LCA documents on AoP, and in particular the articles by Reitinger et al. (2011) and Subramanian et al. (2018) and the 2020 S-LCA guidelines (UNEP 2020); literature on sustainability assessment (Audouin and de Wet 2012); and established global policy approaches to assessing sustainability, such as the SDGs (UN 2015).

The operationalisation of the review consists of a number of procedural steps. The steps are presented schematically in Fig. 1 and with further details described in the following:

The concept HWB is in philosophy used to denote what is good for a person or what a person considers to be good (Crisp 2021). HWB is prominently theorised in contemporary philosophy (cf., Adler 2012; Crisp 2021). The central theoretical debate in this philosophy as identified by Crisp (2021) and Adler (2012) distinguishes between three perspectives on the HWB concept: choice determinants, typically referred to as desires; objectively good items; and experience, typically referred to as pleasure and displeasure, or hedonism. The choice perspective considers preference satisfaction for humans when they make choices. As a contrast, the perspective of objectively good items is about items considered to support HWB and that humans may not have enough information about to account for when making choices. The experience perspective is concerned with the perceptions humans have of their lives. To this categorisation, Crisp (2021) only identifies one potential criticism: the risk that the experience perspective can be seen as a list of aspects and thus warrant to be treated together with objectively good items, since the latter are presented as lists. Because this critique is of a formalistic nature, we deem the three categories still useful. In addition, earlier philosophical accounts by Frankena (1973) are compatible with the categorisation. Frankena identified that objective goods were seen as a middle-way for overcoming arguments between proponents for hedonism and non-hedonism views, and that objective goods can account for both hedonism and non-hedonism. In the following, we reason about these three perspectives, based on Adler’s (2012) survey of philosophy literature on the topic, outline sustainability relevant matters not centrally covered in literature on the perspectives, and suggest a way for relating the three perspectives to one another.

The choice perspective on HWB has played an important role. The perspective has been dominant within economics. In addition, the view is adopted within moral philosophy. The correlation between choice determinants and ultimate HWB, however, depends on how well humans’ choices are informed about the consequences of them. In the philosophy of HWB, it is considered that humans have far from full information about the consequences when making decisions. In addition, non-conscious behaviour may be even less informed by a rational overview of possible effects resulting from the behaviour. Decisions and non-conscious behaviour are however activities that do take place and therefore result in ultimate impacts on HWB.

In addition to the choice perspective, contemporary philosophers offer lists of HWB constituents that have been found to be “objective”. Objective here refers to “goods” that are seen as intrinsic parts of HWB because they so clearly can support humans in their lives. A prominent objective-goods list is the mentioned list by Grisez et al. (1987) on: life; knowledge and aesthetic experience; excellence in work and play; harmony between persons; inner peace; harmony among judgements, choices, and performances; and harmony with something more-than-human. The objective-list perspective can both assist in capturing important aspects of HWB that may not be captured by the choices driven by the desires, and assist in identifying the causes of the aggregated experience of pleasure and displeasure. We also identify an aspect of the objectively good items perspective not explicitly addressed in the reviewed literature; the choice of components to include in an objective-good list, as well as the importance for well-being of each such component, depends on what is defined as a good life. The definition of a good life can vary across space and time, making a generic definition challenging. More generally, the idea in which reality only can be accessed through a representation of it - the foundation of Western science - has been criticised by the postmodern paradigm since the 1970s (Aylesworth 2015). Acknowledging this postmodern view, definitions through words may only account for parts of what matters to humans.

Finally, HWB can be linked to experience through mental states. In many cases this link is defined as striving for positive mental states of pleasure and avoiding negative mental states of displeasure. To account for these states, concepts such as happiness and subjective HWB have been used. Considering experience may be more representative of ultimate HWB than an assessment of desires or objective goods, since the latter two may neither cover all causes of impacts on mental states, nor account for the different weights of these impacts. Assessing mental states is, however, clearly challenging and maybe only possible to a certain degree.

Based on the presentation in this section, we suggest that the three perspectives can be understood as mainly linked to one another through a few causal relationships. These relationships go from choice determinants via objective goods to experience, as illustrated in Fig. 2. Such a structure highlights the relevance of considering all of the three perspectives. The objective goods have a central role in these relationships, being more detailed and giving a more tangible descriptions than the other two perspectives, and are thus readily graspable while providing concrete guidance. These aspects of the objective goods may explain why it is more prominent than the other perspectives in S-LCA literature. Because of these aspects of the objective goods and the HWB component sets that operationalise them, such component sets are deemed a valid starting point for further consideration of the AoP in S-LCA.

We identified eight fully or partly systematic component approaches to HWB. Of these, we found six approaches on fully systematic component sets and two approaches on partly systematic such sets. The full set of approaches are listed in Table 1 and described further in the remainder of this sub-chapter.

Based on key publications on sustainability science generally (e.g., UN 1987, 2015), S-LCA (Schaubroeck and Rugani 2017; UNEP 2009, 2020), and the six selected approached to systematic HWB components (e.g. Finnis 2011; Max-Neef 1991; Missimer et al. 2017a, b; Nussbaum 2015; Ryan and Deci 2020; Schwartz 2012), a range of aspects to evaluate the approaches were identified. The aspects cover both general scientific soundness, including transparency, and specific sustainability challenges. Aspects on component definition, scope, and features were selected for further analysis of the six approaches.

Regarding scope, level of completeness, whether universality is claimed, whether endpoints are considered, changes in the component set, and research process were considered. The endpoint aspect relates to the ambition of S-LCA to consider ultimate impacts on humans, in practice using the IP approach. Changes over time relates to the importance of the intergenerational aspect in sustainability. Research process includes consideration of the degree to which different individuals, cultures, and times are represented, the types of and amount of data sources, and collection and analysis approaches.

Regarding features, potential overlap between components, interdependency between components, and whether the components are seen as forming a hierarchy were identified as central issues.

The overview of sustainability science aspects and component similarities across the six fully systematic approaches to HWB components is presented in Tables 2 and 3, respectively and commented on in the following.

Regarding sustainability science aspects, we identify patterns regarding scope, rigour, and additional differences across the six approaches. The scope is comprehensive and universal or near-universal according to the claims in all cases, but limited to self-determined aspects of life in the Ryan and Deci (2020) approach and to a minimally decent human life in the Nussbaum (2015) approach. In addition, a majority of the six approaches have been developed through substantial amounts of systematic research. Regarding further differences, some approaches explicitly mention that components may change, have interrelations, and be of different prominence, while the other approaches do not explicitly address these issues.

Regarding similarities and differences across the six HWB component approaches, they were found largely to address the same or similar aspects. The exception is the Ryan and Deci (2020) approach, with its broad but in comparison limited scope of HWB aspects.

Combining the synthesis of the six HWB component approaches with the results from mapping them onto sustainability science aspects and the philosophy on HWB, we have distilled a framework that puts the five synthesised components in a context for further consideration and application, as shown in Table 4. A discussion on practical opportunities for using the framework is presented in the next section.

The framework presented in this paper is designed to be a general starting point for considering assessing sustainability in and beyond S-LCA. Earlier research by Weidema (2006) illustrates the challenges in quantifying impacts on social sustainability and in particular on aspects besides health-based issues. The most challenging aspects to assess in Weidema’s framework, based on the coarse level of assessment and the degree of estimation, are unequal opportunities and participation restrictions. Besides these aspects, the framework account only to a limited degree for the aspects having abilities and having a meaningful life, included in the framework presented here. In addition, the frameworks and reviews of social sustainability assessments by Labuschagne and Brent (2006), Weidema (2006), Reitinger et al. (2011), and Steen and Palander (2016) have focused on shorter chains of cause-effect chains, and often with each chain passing through the same intermediary steps. The paper by Schaubroeck and Rugani (2017), however, suggests complicated and iterative relationships between social, environmental, and economic sustainability. The challenge becomes even larger when considering the already demanding complexity of the existing S-LCA approaches, as illustrated by Lindkvist and Rydberg (2020) regarding the use of S-LCA in business, government agencies, and research institutes in Sweden. It is difficult within the scope of our study to indicate wheter certain of the presented HWB components are more challenging to operationalise than others. In general, considerable challenges may exist in assessing each of them.

In relation to other conceptualisations on the S-LCA AoP, a focus on HWB can be seen but also some variation regarding the use of terms. The 2020 S-LCA guidelines (UNEP 2020) refer in addition to HWB to social well-being; a term not further defined in the guidelines. Societal level aspects are explicitly included in our framework, by taking as the point of departure the societal aspects in the framework by Missimer et al. (2017b). As a complement, Soltanpour et al. (2019) presented a conceptualisation where a societal level is an IP step prior to the individual level expressed as HWB. Since societal aspects in some cases can be convenient to express as “societal” but eventually manifest themselves in interactions between and experience by individuals, our use of the term HWB should not be seen as excluding societal considerations.

To put focus on ends as distinct from substitutable means, the framework presented in this paper is based on theoretical HWB perspectives. Such a focus aligns with the S-LCA AoP framework by Reitinger et al. (2011) and the 2020 S-LCA guidelines (UNEP 2020), but departs to some extent from the business and policy focus used by Labuschagne and Brent’s (2006) social sustainability framework and the basic needs focus in Steen and Palander’s (2016) sustainability assessment framework. We identify a challenge for AoP considerations in the translation between academic approaches and application in businesses and governance.

The present study draws considerably on the work presented by Alkire (2002) on comparisons of HWB approaches. Our framework and its derivation is, however, situated in an S-LCA context contrary to a development context, is based on more than two decades of additional research, and brings in complementary reasoning on limitations grounded in philosophy on HWB. In addition, we find it fruitful to revisit HWB definitions thoroughly after the growing focus on the IP approach in S-LCA lately (cf., Sureau et al. 2020; Ugaya et al. 2023; UNEP 2020).

Other studies on the AoP in relation to S-LCA have generally sought to provide (Labuschagne and Brent 2006; Steen and Palander 2016) and in some cases also test (Reitinger et al. 2011; Weidema 2006) entire IP frameworks. Such broad perspectives can explain the limited attention to the critical assessment of HWB components as such presented in our paper. In particular, this paper provides additional conceptualisation on the role of HWB components in relation to both actual sustainability impacts and to the the decisions where the actual choices of humans are made. In general, this illustrates that different types of studies on how to address sustainability in S-LCA complement one another, and that considerable work remains beyond presenting this framework.

This study points to a need for explorative research onwards, rather than provides a roadmap for further study. Two identified challenges to keep in mind are the trade-off between representing enough complexity and at the same time simplicity for feasibility in both research and use, and the important but absent challenge of whether the academic, business, and/or governance-based HWB definitions and frameworks are sufficient for addressing social sustainability from global perspective. This trade off points to the general challenge of governing the contemporary, often complex, supply chains.