Towards a closed steel eco-cycle - conjoint analysis as a decision tool

Abstract

The Swedish steel industry has over the past 20 years made substantial efforts to promote energyefficiency and environment protection. However, the dominant part of these investments has beendirected to the individual production sites, most of which today have 'solved' their own acuteenvironmental problems. The focus has therefore switched to the properties and performance ofthe steel products where the evaluation of environmental performance is a complex task thatoften requires simultaneous consideration of many different attributes.Conjoint analysis is commonly used in marketing research, to evaluate how consumers appreciatespecific attributes in products. It has also been widely used in health care, traffic planning andquality management. Conjoint analysis has also been applied to environmental issues such asenergy, recreation, environmental valuation, ecosystem management, consumer preferences toproducts, public preferences to industrial projects, waste management, and environmental policydevelopment. This previous research has shown that the method is well suited for evaluatingenvironmental issues.Here we briefly present the methodology and review some papers on environmental applications.It is our intention to use this approach as a tool to integrate environmental considerations intoboth process and product development within the steel industry.