Life Cycle Assessment and Decision Making Theory - Practice-oriented Product Assessment on the Basis of Societal Values

Sven Lundie focussed his PhD on the participation of stakeholders in LCA and the practice-oriented evaluation of impact assessment results in order to deduce reliable environmental recommendations. The starting point of his thesis was an LCA on television sets, led by the Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT), Berlin. This research project was carried out in close cooperation with industry, the Federal Environmental Agency, ecological consultancies as well as a consumer organisation. The collaboration, on the one hand, clarified the importance of an intensive information exchange with stakeholders and, on the other hand, it showed the problems of merging interests from different stakeholder groups. Hence, in the thesis, he combined LCA methodology with general decision-making theory and incorporated a stakeholder approach as well as decision making methods. An 'ideal model of participation' in LCA was developed that allows the choice of relevant stakeholder groups depending on the case considered. In his project he set up a method to evaluate the outcome of LCA studies without requiring explicit value statements. This procedure leads to results in most cases and avoids often fruitless discussions about the relative importance of different environmental problem areas.

Where to find

The dissertation was published in Springer Verlag: Lundie, Sven: Ökobilanzierung und Entscheidungstheorie: Praxisorientierte Produktbewertung auf der Basis gesellschaftlicher Werthaltungen / Sven Lund