Environmental preferences among steel stakeholders

Sammanfattning: Emissions of carbon dioxide, dioxins, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter as well as use of non-renewable resources and energy are some important sustainability challenges for the Swedish steel industry. Much effort has been made, mainly by technical solutions, which to a high degree have decreased the emissions during the last 30 years.Technical solutions however will not be sufficient to reach sustainable development, stakeholder involvement is also necessary. Stakeholder theory states that stake­holder involvement must include a dialog between the stakeholders involved and the operation. The first step in this process is to identify which key issues the stakeholders find most important and then the organisation needs to start interact with its stakeholders. This thesis deals with such issues.Stakeholder preferences for environmental issues were assessed with conjoint analysis, Q-methodology and focus group discussions. The theory of planned behaviour was used to assess how attitudes were connected to background factors and a potential pro-environmental behaviour.Five studies have been carried out in the framework of this thesis. The studies include: a literature review, method evaluation, evaluation of environ­mental objectives in stakeholder groups, screening of relevant factors, evaluation of steel environmental characteristics, identification of barriers to the introduction of new materials and the im­pact of worry and risk perception on strategic environmental decisions.It can be concluded that the methods applied in the studies work well in eliciting preferences. It has been possible to show how different stakeholder groups as well as individuals prioritise environmental objectives and sustaina­bility issues. Since individuals within a stakeholder group vary considerably in preferences, the results from this thesis show the importance of illustrating results on an individual level instead of the traditional group level. Also, a method has been tested where the results were brought back to the respondents in order to stimulate discussions between different stakeholder groups.