Exploring social handprints on well-being: a methodological framework to assess the contribution of business models in city region food systems

Purpose: Acknowledging urban–rural linkages as crucial forces driving resource and food flows, the city region food system (CRFS) approach gained momentum as a premise to stimulate the transition towards more sustainable food systems. CRFS initiatives (CRFSis) represent potential game-changers implementing innovative business models (BMs) addressing human well-being as a core goal of sustainability. Building on learnings from the EU-H2020 project FoodE, an assessment framework is proposed to unveil social handprints on stakeholders’ well-being in CRFSi BM. Methods: The assessment framework is grounded on the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) methodology combined with a mixed-method approach. The BM canvas is used to support the analysis of the product system and its main activities, along with the interpretation of impact assessment, while the millennium ecosystem assessment is adopted for defining both the area of protection and the impact categories, and the theory of change is followed to draw the impact pathway. The assessment framework is implemented in a case study to verify its applicability. Results and discussion: Results provide a life cycle–based assessment framework to unveil social handprints in CRFSi, monitor BM performance, and support decision-making to improve CRFSi’s social sustainability. The assessment framework operationalises a social handprint approach to assess positive social impacts on well-being through a novel impact pathway presenting social handprints in terms of person-equivalent. Critical aspects in social handprints are qualitatively interpreted considering the BM canvas to identify the strengths and weaknesses as well as potential improvements of the BM. This ready-to-use framework provides an easily understandable measure of people directly benefiting from the CRFSi activities, along with an ad hoc interpretation of the BM characteristics and the related potentiality for social handprints. Conclusions: This paper provides a pragmatic conceptualisation and methodological framework for the assessment of positive impacts to be applied to social business in CRFSi. The framework can be directly exploited by business owners and decision-makers to assess and improve BM for social handprint maximisation. Further development is recommended to advance the S-LCA methodology towards social handprint assessment with specific reference to BM, along with validation through both scientific community consultation and real case study applications, to ultimately support European and local policy-makers in the definition and assessment of economic activities having positive social impacts.