Environmental goods valuations for social sustainability: A conceptual framework

There is growing interest in the environmental impact of organizational activities. This exploratory study introduces the need to integrate economic market and non-market valuations for social sustainability in organizations. While organizations have not reached this integration, the potential to help in development and the introduction of social sustainability is significant. The methodology includes an extensive research into economic market and non-market valuation literature for social sustainability. This paper integrates a new approach to the current academic literature highlighting social aspects of sustainability within the supply chain and specifically in reverse logistics. The literature review led to the development of a framework guiding and simplifying these efforts. Practical situations of environmental goods valuations of social sustainability in reverse logistics are provided as an illustration. Using organizational supply chains and reverse logistics as an example, the application of various tools is presented using an environmental goods valuation framework. The integration of these topics aid researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. The findings make a contribution to the strategic organizational justification, performance measurement and sustainability literature by further integrating environmental goods valuation tools, models, theory and practices. The paper includes the development of propositions to be addressed in future research.