Ecological Indicators 57 (2015) 452–464 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Indicators jo ur nal ho me page: www.elsevier.com/locate/ ecolind Defining criteria and indicators for a sustainability label of local public services Ana Rita Domingues a,∗ , Sara Moreno Pires b , Sandra Caeiro a,c , Tomás B. Ramos a a CENSE, Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research, Departamento de Ciências e Engenharia do Ambiente, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus da Caparica, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal b UCILeR, University of Coimbra, Institute for Legal Research, Pátio da Universidade, 3004-545 Coimbra, Portugal c Departamento de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Aberta, R. Escola Politécnica, n ◦ 141, 1269-001 Lisboa, Portugal a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 18 September 2014 Received in revised form 31 March 2015 Accepted 6 May 2015 Keywords: Sustainability label European Union Ecolabel Global Reporting Initiative Indicators Public service Communication a b s t r a c t The assessment of sustainability of public services is an important issue, especially at local level, taken into account the central role of local governments as a major public employer and provider of a diversity of services. Local governments are close to citizens and are moving faster than other public sector levels with regard to the integration of sustainability principles in their operations and strategies. A sustainability label to communicate public service performance enables to disclose information directly to service users. However, there is a dearth of research about labels addressing specific sustainability criteria for local services. The main aim of this research was the development of a conceptual framework to define a sustainability label, as a tool to assess and communicate sustainability of local public services. The approach was developed taking into account criteria of the European Union Ecolabel and indicators of the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The ecolabel is a relatively well-known voluntary instrument in Europe and has the potential for application in public service activities and operations, but only assess the environmental component of sustainability. The Global Reporting Initiative, in particular the Sector Supplement for Public Agencies, was then used to integrate the other sustainability components. Thirty- six (36) criteria and respective indicators were adapted for the proposed sustainability label conceptual framework. A Portuguese local public service was used as an exploratory case study to test the proposed conceptual model into practice. The overall results demonstrate that few criteria were accomplished in this local public service, stressing that new practices and public policies need to be adopted to invert the current trend, especially through the application of assessment systems. This exploratory case study research has shown how useful can be a sustainability label to support local governments in evaluating and communicating the sustainability performance of their public services. This case could drive and support other government levels, including central and regional public administration, in adopting and exploring public service labels and their associated performance approaches. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Environmental labels act as market regulators, when applied by third parties, to prevent the advertisement of any product (goods and services) as green when it does not comply with strict environmental standards (Dosi and Moretto, 2001). In a soci- ety where consumption patterns are one of the major driving forces behind environmental degradation, environmental labelling schemes emerge as an environmental policy instrument with a ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 212948397; fax: +351 212948554. E-mail address: arsd@fct.unl.pt (A.R. Domingues). large potential to contribute to an effective reduction of environ- mental impacts associated to economic activities (Santos et al., 2006). These labels result from criteria that take into account the environmental impacts that products may have in their life-cycle to make sure that the label gives consumers/users the possibility to choose the products that are least harmful to the environment (Lavallée and Plouffe, 2004). They are a way to narrow the informa- tion gap, where independent third parties assure consumers/users that the product meets those environmental standards (van Amstel et al., 2008). Therefore, they can motivate consumers/users to switch to less environmentally harmful and resource-consuming products (Thøgersen, 2002), with simple, useful and credible infor- mation about complex issues along the supply chain (Hartlieb and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.05.016 1470-160X/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.