Stakeholders' Opinions: Food Sustainability as an Exemplary Case

Stakeholders decisions often are based on the construction of an indicative quantity (a composite indicator), which can be obtained by an aggregation process of a series of single indicators. This aggregation process combines single indicators to one quantity, the composite indicator. In the most simple aggregation technique a weighted sum is applied. Unfortunately, stakeholders often have different opinions concerning the individual weights that should be associated with single indicators. The resulting composite indicator applied for an eventual ranking may consequently be different from stakeholder to stakeholder. The present study focuses on a partial order based methodology for evaluating stakeholders' opinions based on the food sustainability index for 2017 as an exemplary case. The paper presents the methodological background for the use of composite indicators under different weighting schemes. The food sustainability index (FSI) is composed through an aggregation of three main indicators, i.e., food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges. In the present case four fictitious 'stakeholders', represented by four different weighting schemes, expert-based, political, outcome-based and uniform are included. The study shows that differences between the four weighting schemes are present. Furthermore it is shown that within certain limits the overall ranking of 34 countries based on the FSI leads to a linear ranking of 4 specific groups of countries, virtually summarizing the different stakeholders' opinions.

Automated summary

This study examines the evaluation of stakeholders' opinions based on the food sustainability index for 2017, showing that different weighting schemes lead to variations in country rankings. Within certain limits, the overall ranking of countries based on the FSI results in a linear ranking of specific groups of countries, effectively summarizing different stakeholders' opinions.