LCA IN NORTH AMERICA Who Cares About Life Cycle Assessment? A Survey of 900 Prospective Life Cycle Assessment Practitioners Eric Masanet and Yuan Chang Introduction In the past few decades, life cycle assessment (LCA) has evolved from a niche application into a mainstream method- ology for guiding environmental decisions related to products, policies, business strategies, and environmental communica- tions. As such, it is clear that LCA practice is no longer limited Our cohort was drawn from students enrolled in a massive open online course (MOOC) ti- tled ‘How Green is That Prod- uct? An Introduction to Life Cycle Environmental Assess- ment.’ Given the global nature of MOOCs, our survey included wider geographic representation than . . . previous . . . surveys to a dedicated few engineers and scien- tists; rather, it is increasingly being utilized within a large number of professions and for a wide variety of sustainability objectives. Previous surveys have shed light on the applications, methods, and challenges of experienced LCA analysts. This journal has published two such surveys, both of which offered useful windows into the state of LCA practice. Cooper and Fava sur- veyed 65 LCA practitioners in 2006 and fo- cused on their job functions, how and why they used LCA, and the difficulties faced when performing LCAs (Cooper and Fava 2006). In 2011, Teixeira and Pax adapted the Cooper and Fava survey to query an additional 117 LCA practitioners (Teixeira and Pax 2011), primarily from the agri-food industries. Both surveys provided useful insights on LCA applications and challenges related to LCA methods and data sources. This column presents survey results for a different, but equally important, cohort: prospective LCA practitioners. We define prospective LCA practitioners as those with little or no LCA experience who are in the early stages of their for- mal LCA training. Understanding the skills, professions, and intended applications of prospective LCA practitioners can provide insights into the characteristics and expectations of future LCA analysts. By considering the needs of both cur- rent and prospective LCA practitioners, the LCA commu- © 2014 by Yale University DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12189 Volume 18, Number 6 nity can make broader-reaching methodological and pedagog- ical improvements to enable wider adoption of LCA moving forward. Our cohort was drawn from students enrolled in a mas- sive open online course (MOOC) titled “How green is that product? An introduction to life cycle environmental assess- ment.” This 9-week MOOC was offered in January 2014 through the Coursera platform (Masanet 2014). The MOOC introduced students to quantitative aspects of LCA, including constructing unit process models, compil- ing life cycle inventories (LCIs), conduct- ing impact assessments, and interpreting results within the context of the Inter- national Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040 series of standards. Upon en- rollment, students were asked to complete a precourse survey. Nearly 2,500 students responded to the survey, which provides a much larger sample size than previous sur- veys of LCA practitioners. Our informal survey was not designed for rigorous statis- tical analysis, but rather to identify broad characteristics among the student body. Given the global nature of MOOCs, our survey included wider geographic representation than the previous two surveys, in which 90% of respondents were from North America and Europe. Of our respondents, 34% were from Europe, 31% were from North America, 21% were from Asia (predominantly from India and China), 10% were from Central and South America, 2% were from Africa, and 2% were from Australasia. These re- sults may reflect a growing interest in LCA beyond its historical strongholds of North America and Europe and should lend this survey a more globally representative perspective than previous surveys. www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jie Journal of Industrial Ecology 787