'Socializing' sustainability: a critical review on current development status of social life cycle impact assessment method

Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is a technique to assess the potential social impacts of a product or service caused by its life cycle. The aim of this paper is to critically review the methodologies applied in S-LCIA and establish its current development status by highlighting areas for improvement. The UNEP/SETAC Guidelines published in 2009 provided general procedures for conducting S-LCA, but lack S-LCIA methods. Many new S-LCIA methods have been proposed but these are inherently different, indicating a scientific and well-accepted S-LCIA method is yet to be developed. Broadly, two types of S-LCIA methods, i.e. performance reference point and impact pathways methods are in use. A direction for future research could be the refinement of the social hotspots database and the social hotspot index calculation method. Moreover, the S-LCIA method could be developed by combining the performance reference point and impact pathways methods.

社会生命周期评估（S - LCA）是一种评估产品或服务在其生命周期中可能产生的社会影响的技术。本文的目的是批判性地回顾社会生命周期影响评价（S - LCIA）中所应用的方法，并通过强调需要改进的方面来确定其当前的发展状况。2009年发布的联合国环境规划署/环境毒理学与化学学会指南为开展社会生命周期评估提供了通用程序，但缺乏社会生命周期影响评价方法。许多新的社会生命周期影响评价方法已经被提出，但这些方法本质上各不相同，这表明一种科学且被广泛接受的社会生命周期影响评价方法尚未被开发出来。大体上，有两种类型的社会生命周期影响评价方法正在被使用，即绩效参考点法和影响路径法。未来研究的一个方向可能是完善社会热点数据库以及社会热点指数计算方法。此外，可以通过结合绩效参考点法和影响路径法来开发社会生命周期影响评价方法。