Life cycle assessment of in‐person, virtual, and hybrid academic conferences

New evidence and perspectives

Bibliographic Data

ID19468394
AuthorsAntonio Cavallin Toscani (0000-0001-6245-9843, Department of Management and Engineering University of Padova Padova Italy, corresponding author), Atalay Atasu (0000-0003-1572-8937, Technology and Operations Management Area, INSEAD Fontainebleau France), Luk N Van Wassenhove (0000-0002-5573-1834, Technology and Operations Management Area, INSEAD Fontainebleau France), Andrea Vinelli (0000-0003-2070-0162, Department of Management and Engineering University of Padova Padova Italy)
Year2023
Volume27
Issue6
Pages1461-1475
Publication date2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Industrial Ecology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1088-1980 • E-ISSN: 1530-9290
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/jiec.13430
OpenAlexW4385761526
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited35

This study contributes to the debate on the environmental impacts of academic conferences by comparing the life cycle impacts of a sample of real‐world in‐person, virtual, and hybrid conferences with different features and organizers. Results show that virtual formats reduce impacts by two to three orders of magnitude across all impact categories (for global warming, averagely from 941.9 to 1.0 kg CO 2eq per person). The hybrid case study, with a share of 69% virtual attendees, displays an average 60% reduction in indicator results, less than ideal cases where the farthest attendees join online. The cross‐conference comparison allowed identifying several drivers of impact variation. For in‐person conferences, some never addressed drivers were uncovered, including the energy sources and systems used to supply the venue or the number of non‐local staff members and exhibitors. For virtual conferences, the main impact driver is the average time spent online by delegates, surprisingly more related to virtual experience design (e.g., synchronous vs. asynchronous presentations) than conference duration. The study further summarizes mitigation options from the literature and proposes new ones, such as selecting a venue supplied by a biomass‐fueled district heating system or with a green electricity contract (around −41 and −1.9 kg CO 2eq per person, respectively). Lastly, our work highlights some inconsistencies that affect current conference assessments and proposes new research avenues, advocating the need to shift the focus from optimizing single conferences to considering the optimal portfolio of conferences and other activities for academic societies to meet their members’ needs while minimizing environmental impacts

Asynchronous communication · Business · Economics · Environmental economics · Operations research · Portfolio · Telecommunications · Computer Science · Conferences and Exhibitions Management · Delphi Technique in Research · Engineering · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

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