Knowledge Bank

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides insight into the environmental and human health impacts of processes and products like electric vehicles. However, the complexity of LCA results often leads to ineffective communication of key environmental impacts and hinders their interpretation, preventing non-expert audiences from making informed sustainability decisions. My study addresses these communication challenges by evaluating visualizations commonly employed in LCA results. Using A/B testing through a Qualtrics survey, my study evaluates four common visualizations seen in LCA results: (1) stacked bar charts, (2) unstacked bar charts, (3) pie charts, and (4) Sankey diagrams. My survey collected responses from a total of 172 participants from Ohio State University and local Columbus communities, which I analyzed. My findings offer insights into the effectiveness of the visualizations and identify those that best bridge gaps in understanding between technical experts and general audiences. Based on these insights, I developed a set of recommendations to make complex LCA results more accessible and support informed decision-making. These recommendations crafted are from the survey results, but they also follow common best practices in visualization design.