Anna Irene De Luca

Social life cycle assessment and participatory approaches: A methodological proposal applied to citrus farming in Southern Italy.

UNLABELLED Recently, Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) has been developed under the methodological framework of Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) to evaluate the social impacts that emerge during the overall life cycle of a product or service. There is not yet a standardized methodology for S-LCA as there is for environmental LCA (eLCA), due to the nature of social impacts that do not depend only on the processes themselves, but also on the behavior and context of actors (manufactures, consumers, local community members, etc.). One of the most critical steps in the application of S-LCA concerns the choice of criteria for selecting affected actors, impact categories, subcategories, and the taxonomic relation among them. Moreover, the importance (in terms of weight) of these impacts may be felt differently by affected actors, confirming the importance of the context within which impacts arise. In this sense, the integration of participatory tools can be useful in making the S-LCA more locally relevant. The aim of the present study is twofold. First, we will outline a methodology that combines S-LCA with two research tools. The first is the focus group, adopted from qualitative research. The second is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), adopted from operational research, which belongs to the framework of Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). These have been used to make the S-LCA more locally relevant and to legitimate the criteria used. Second, we will test this methodology by applying it to a specific field, i.e., 3 production areas and 3 different crop systems of citrus growing in the Calabria region in Southern Italy. Citrus growing is one of the most important agricultural sectors at regional level, and it is also well known for issues of social concern, particularly in relation to immigrant workers. The results show a number of differences between cases and could offer useful insights to both local decision makers, such as agricultural entrepreneurs, and to those public decision makers that design and implement territorial planning strategies. Results have allowed the authors to rank the social performance of each case and to reflect on the most critical steps in conducting an S-LCA. KEY FINDINGS The integration of qualitative techniques and a multicriteria in sLCA allows catching local specificities by involving local experts and stakeholders Results highlighted that impact categories mostly contributed to performance differences Public deciders can be supported in deciding which farming practices should be encouraged, which social domains must be paid more attention, and where social problems mostly occur The methodological application allowed the authors also to foresee the feasibility of the integration of LCA and LCC results as inputs in sLCA to conduct a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA).

Life Cycle Assessment in the Fruit Sector

Fruit products are generally considered to be some of the less environmentally damaging foods in occidental diets. In fact studies investigating the carbon footprint of different food choices have reported that fruit is the category with the least environmental impact. However, these studies use data from environmental assessments of generic fruit production, which take no account of specific issues within orchard systems and fruit supply chains. Indeed, modern food production is very diverse, with high levels of specialisation and complexity. These features inevitably affect methodologies in the application of LCA to food products and agro-systems. It is therefore important to study what has already been done regarding standardisation of application protocols in order to make appropriate comparisons between products. In the present chapter, a review of LCA application in fruit systems is presented: papers from international journals, national journals, and conference proceedings have been reviewed. In particular, it can be assumed that mainstream research on the LCA applied to fruit production systems began around 2005; most of the papers were published in 2010 and 2012 in conjunction with international conferences on LCA in the agri-food sector. The review covers all the main criteria for conducting an LCA in fruit production systems. Specific issues considered are: aims and scopes, system boundaries, product considered, functional unit, data origin, life cycle-based methodology adopted, and environmental impact assessment method used. Furthermore this chapter investigates two aspects that are rarely considered in LCA studies of fruit systems: the role of nurseries in determine environmental impacts and the carbon storage properties of orchards.

Gender Differences in Pro-social Behaviour: The Case of Fair-trade Food Consumers

Objective of this paper is to analyse the presence of gender differences in the purchase motivations of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the Italian World Shops (WS). At this end, a questionnaire has been distributed to a sample of consumers in four Italian regions. A bivariate ordered probit analysis has been performed in order to identify the determinants of the two main ethical motivations in the purchase: worker guarantees and solidarity. The variables used as determinants are individual and municipal characteristics. Among individual characteristics, gender is significant; among the municipal characteristics, the rate of female job market participation is also significant. These results give evidence of a gender gap in the preferences for public goods.

Why social life cycle assessment is struggling in development

Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) has been the last tool to be developed among its peers, environmental life cycle assessment (LCA), and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). S-LCA is dedicated to the assessment of social impacts along all phases of the life cycle of a product or service, from planning to disposal, i.e., from cradle to grave (De Luca et al. 2015a, b). However, since the beginning in the 1990s, S-LCA has struggled to fully develop. It has not yet reached consensus on a standardized assessment procedure like LCA and LCC (this latter only for the building sector), affecting, in turn, the conceptual development of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) (Sala et al. 2013; Zamagni et al. 2013). Many methodological proposals have been set up but they are very different in terms of the following:

Dynamics, motivations and barriers in internationalisation processes of wineries in Calabria

ABSTRACT This research has a twofold purpose: to get an insight into the internationalisation process of the wine industry in Calabria (South Italy), a region that has recently started to be credited for high-quality wines, and to conduct an investigation on internationalisation dynamics of Calabrian wineries, on the stimuli that push them into international context and the barriers they face. A qualitative case-study methodology was used following several steps: a theoretical background on SMEs’ internationalisation models was carried out in order to characterise the internationalisation patterns of Calabrian wineries; the Resource Based View (RBV) model was applied to investigate the Calabrian wineries’ leverages; a regulatory/normative approach was adopted in order to analyse the role of institutions and public agencies and how the local culture, values, beliefs and norms affect the international activity; finally, an Entry Mode Matrix was implemented to evaluate the market entry strategies adopted by Calabrian wineries. Findings clearly showed how the internationalisation process of SMEs can be highly context-specific and how a combination of tangible and intangible firms’ resources in interaction with home-based external conditions plays a crucial role in the internationalisation process of Calabrian wineries. [EconLit citations: Q120, Q130].

Do Co-Operatives Promote Consumer Social Responsibility? The Case of Fair Trade in Italy

Understanding the determinants of the demand for goods, which have been produced according to ethical considerations and marketed accordingly, has become an important research area in business economics. Less clear is the role that the social environment plays in shaping the preferences for ethically produced goods. Our main objective is to fill this gap in the literature by quantifying the extent to which the social capital generated by the presence of co-operatives in an area can have an impact on the consumers’ motivations to buy ethically produced goods by using a sample of 889 individuals who have visited one of the retailers specialized in the distribution of ethically produced goods in four Italian regions. Our results show that the presence of co-operatives in an area has a positive influence on the consumers’ preferences for fair trade goods.

Evaluating the Environmental, Economic, and Social Sustainability of Agro-Food Systems Through Life Cycle Approaches

Abstract The topic of agro-food sustainability has been faced extensively, over the years, by researchers from different disciplines. The distinctive features of agro-food systems, in comparison with other fields, request necessarily a significant knowledge effort aimed to define new methodologies, by moving towards a holistic evaluation of problems. The life cycle conceptual framework and its operative and methodological instruments can offer useful guidelines and practical recommendations to address private and public subjects on sustainable pathways. This chapter provides an overview of life cycle tools: life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, and social life cycle assessment by highlighting their meanings and principal characteristics and tracing a brief review of applications in agro-food contexts.

Social Life Cycle Assessment for agricultural sustainability: comparison of two methodological proposals in a paradigmatic perspective

The purpose of the present research is to provide an explanation about the diversity of methodological approaches proposed until today for SLCA, tracking down its roots in the cultural and scientific heritage of social sciences, especially sociology and management sciences. This will help to shift the current methodological debate in SLCA to an epistemological level, through a critical review about the underlying paradigms that have been applied in SLCA literature until now. Secondly, the research highlights the possible consequences of different paradigmatic stances in SLCA by means of the application, to an important agricultural sector in Calabria, of two different methodological proposals set up from opposite paradigms (post-positivism and interpretivism) and compared in terms of research process and typology of insights.