The social impacts of products: a review

Abstract

Many agree that every product has economic, environmental, and social impacts on those who use and produce them. While environmental and economic impacts are well known and measures have been developed, our understanding of social impacts is still developing. While efforts have been made to identify social impacts, academics, and practitioners still disagree on which phenomena should be included, and few have focused on the impacts of products specifically compared with programs, policies, or other projects. The primary contribution of this review essay is to integrate scholarship from a wide array of social science and engineering disciplines that categorizes the social phenomena that are affected by products. Specifically, we identify social impacts and processes including population change, family, gender, education, stratification, employment, health and well-being, human rights, networks and communication, conflict and crime, and cultural identity/heritage. These categories are important because they can be used to inform academics and practitioners alike who are interested in creating products that generate positive social benefits for users.

Keywords:

• Social impact
• social sustainability
• products
• impact assessment
• measurable social phenomena
• technology assessment

Notes

1. Code of Ethics of Engineers. 2009. American Society of Mechanical Engineers. See https://www.asme.org/getmedia/9EB36017-FA98-477E-8A73-77B04B36D410/P157_Ethics.aspx; accessed April 14, 2017.

2. Code of Ethics. 2001. Society of Manufacturing Engineers. See http://ethics.iit.edu/ecodes/node/3296; accessed April 14, 2017.

3. Elsewhere, Burdge and Vanclay (1996, p. 32) define social impacts as

all social and cultural consequences to human populations of any public or private actions that alter the ways in which people live, work, play, relate to one another, organize to meet their needs, and generally cope as members of society.

4. See http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx; accessed June 5, 2017.