Participatory approach for pertinent impact subcategory identification: Local community.

Purpose: Standardized and generalized impact subcategories may not be representative of the social issues associated with the product analyzed in social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) studies. The analyst's knowledge about the product studied is currently considered to define the impact subcategories included in the study, characterizing a limitation to be overcome. This research proposes a method able to model the subjectivity associated with the selection of impact subcategories for S-LCA through a stakeholders' participatory approach. Methods: This framework is composed of three stages and was applied for the stakeholder "Local Community" of the fruit pulp produced in northeastern Brazil. The first phase identifies the representatives of local communities around the product's life cycle and the potential subcategories that can be considered. In the second phase, the preference elicitation process of these representatives is carried out. In the third phase, the information obtained is aggregated to classify the impact subcategories into relevant and non-relevant through the PROMSORT method. Results and discussion: The methodological steps were applied into two contexts: (i) individual perception and (ii) consensus perception. In the first case, the representatives considered the following relevant subcategories: access to material resources, cultural heritage, access to immaterial resources, and safe and healthy living conditions. However, the subcategories of community engagement and displacement and migration were not classified as strongly relevant. Only the subcategory respecting the rights of native peoples was considered non-pertinent. For the second case, the pertinent subcategories were access to material resources, cultural heritage, access to immaterial resources, displacement and migration, safe and healthy living conditions, and community engagement. The non-relevant subcategory also refers to respect for the rights of native peoples. Conclusions: The use of a participatory approach considering the stakeholders' perceptions for identifying the pertinent impact subcategories can better identify the social issues of a given product life cycle. This framework can be applied to different products and can be adapted for other categories of stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]