A framework to evaluate eco- and social-labels for designing a sustainability consumption label to measure strong sustainability impact of firms/products

Many methodologies have been suggested in the current literature to facilitate scholars and consumers to select environmental friendly products. A basic weakness of such methodologies is the lack of strong sustainability ideas and aspects which are essential for the selection procedures of environmental friendly products. This paper develops an evaluation framework to assist consumers/stakeholders in making rational and effortless evaluation about the sustainability performance of firms/products. Specifically, it provides a quick, clear and comprehensive signal to consumers/stakeholders concerning the extent to which a firm/product contributes to sustainable development. The proposed framework consists of two parts: a) a composite index which (under the triple-bottom-line approach) indicates the allocation of revenues to the different stakeholder groups, and assesses the social and environmental aspects of corporate sustainability performance and b) the transformation of a composite index into a new label which determines the strong or weak sustainability of a product/firm. This framework aims at contributing to the current literature by addressing the weaknesses of previous methodologies which are solely based on either corporate operational or production process labels, as well as on the weak sustainability concept which have made low progress to evaluate the overall sustainable picture of firms/products. Finally, a case study has been carried out to indicate and assess the functionality of the proposed framework.