Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Green initiatives for logistics service providers: An investigation of

antecedent factors and the contributions to corporate goals
Panitas Sureeyatanapas a, *, Peerapat Poophiukhok a, Supachai Pathumnakul b
a
Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
b
Supply Chain and Logistics System Research Unit, Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002,
Thailand

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Concern for sustainability has become more intense among business practitioners due to increasing
Received 29 November 2017 societal demand for environmental care. Product sellers nowadays cannot sustain themselves in the
Received in revised form competitive market only from greening the manufacturing processes, but all parties across the supply
21 March 2018
chain are also driven to be ‘green’, even logistics service providers (LSPs). This study aims to provide
Accepted 22 April 2018
Available online 23 April 2018
insights into the initiation of green policies within logistics companies by investigating the significant
factors that influence the adoption of green practices, along with the ranking orders of several green
activities in terms of their contributions to two corporate goals: cost reduction and environmental
Keywords:
Green logistics
protection. The results were based upon a questionnaire-based survey on 311 LSPs in Thailand. In-
Sustainability terviews with industry experts were also employed to supplement the questionnaire data. Thailand, as
Environmental performance one of Asia's manufacturing hubs, represents developing countries distributing products worldwide, and
Road freight transport its logistics industry is growing rapidly. The results indicate that ‘eco-driving’ and ‘vehicle routing’ ac-
Logistics service provider tivities are more acknowledged and commonly conducted across the industry. The contributions of
Third-party logistics ‘alternative energy’ and ‘modal shift’ are also highly recognised by the practitioners, but a number of
concerns still obstruct the implementation of these approaches. In terms of the antecedent factors,
‘company size’, ‘financial status’, ‘service areas’, ‘pressure from customers’, and ‘organisational support’
appear to be statistically significant for the level of green logistics implementation. The findings make a
contribution to strategic decision making for LSPs who need to improve their environmental perfor-
mance by initiating green projects.
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction 2016). Based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) concept, total CO2
emission throughout the supply chain must be considered for
Manufacturing industries nowadays are under critical condi- determining a product's carbon footprint. This implies that the
tions in which the issues of energy scarcity and environmental pressure is, nowadays, widened to all parties in the chain, including
degradation are greatly considered (Zhang et al., 2014; He et al., LSPs.
2017). Business practitioners nowadays need to take into account Logistics system is generally claimed as one of the major con-
the environmental and social impacts of the whole supply chain in tributors to overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and energy
order to respond to growing public awareness of sustainability consumption in the world (Kim and Han, 2011; Oberhofer and
(Ferreira et al., 2016; Colicchia et al., 2013). Some customers these Dieplinger, 2014; Murphy and Poist, 2003; He et al., 2017). Based
days, for example, require their suppliers to assess and report the on Eurostat, the transportation sector is responsible for 24% of CO2
level of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions or other environmental emission in Europe, and road transport is the major source of that
performance metrics (Azapagic and Perdan, 2000; Ferreira et al., (Oberhofer and Dieplinger, 2014). Similarly, in the US, 26% of the
total GHG emissions come from the transportation sector, and it is
the second largest contributor after the electricity sector (He et al.,
2017). According to these, LSPs are required to ‘green’ their oper-
* Corresponding author. ations in order to sustain themselves in a competitive market. A
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Sureeyatanapas), peerapat.p@kkumail.
com (P. Poophiukhok), [email protected] (S. Pathumnakul).
survey from Eyefortransport (2007) also reveals that around 25% of

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2 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14

sampled companies across the US, Europe, the Middle East, and the improvement of customer relationships as well as to move beyond
Asia Pacific were collaborating with a third-party logistics service environmental regulations. The answers obtained from this study
to help their overall image to be more environmentally friendly or would provide managerial insights into the initiation of GL for LSPs.
to move their green projects forward, while another 27% were Furthermore, the practitioners are advised in terms of how to
studying the possibility to do this in the future. As Martinsen and prepare themselves to be successful in GL implementation. Also,
Bjo€ rklund (2012) note, shippers' demands for green logistics ser- among various GL activities, the study seeks to establish which
vices are increasing. This in turn leads to an increasing interest in should be initiated in order to better fulfil the requirements of
‘green logistics’ (hereafter GL). either cost reduction, environmental protection, or both.
GL is an integration of environmental goals into traditional lo- This paper is organised as follows. After the introduction, Sec-
gistics operations. An overall performance in GL reflects a com- tion 2 presents a literature review on empirical studies relating to
pany's ability to protect the environment by conserving natural GL management. Section 3 then describes the research framework
resources and reducing waste through efficient product flow and and hypotheses. The methodology used is presented in Section 4.
storage (Lai and Wong, 2012). Examples of GL activities include the The results and discussion on managerial insights are given in
use of alternative fuels in transportation, the optimisation of Section 5. Finally, Section 6 provides a conclusion.
transport routes to reduce miles, the change of transport mode
from road to rail, or the use of recyclable packaging materials. The 2. An overview of studies of green logistics management
focus of GL is not only on environmental performance but tradi-
tional goals for logistics management to reduce costs and enhance In order to identify research gaps and construct the initial
product value (Murphy and Poist, 2003; Lau, 2011; Lai and Wong, framework, empirical studies of GL management were reviewed by
2012; Pazirandeh and Jafari, 2013). As Martinsen and Bjo €rklund focusing on two different aspects. Section 2.1 summarises previous
(2012) suggest, for LSPs, GL is a kind of value added service studies that aimed to classify and/or investigate GL practices in a
offered to customers, and this creates an opportunity to gain an particular country or region. Section 2.2 then provides a review of
advantage over competitors. studies that explored the driving factors or mechanisms for the
Southeast Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions in the implementation of GL.
world to global warming, and it urgently needs to take environ-
mental issues into account (Asian Development Bank, 2010). For 2.1. Green logistics practices
Thailand, since the geographical location is at the centre of ASEAN
countries and also closes to growing-market countries such as India During the past decade, a number of researchers conducted
and China, Thailand is becoming a hub of logistics and distribution empirical studies to explore several aspects of GL initiatives in a
centre of the region. It would be also one of the world factories specific country or region. A survey from Eyefortransport (2007),
serving consumers in developed countries who have extensive first of all, compared GL practices among companies in the US,
concerns in conserving natural resources and lessening global Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific using the data of 536 re-
environmental impacts (Lai and Wong, 2012). For this study, spondents from various industries. The respondents were all
Thailand is used as a representative of Asian developing countries transportation and logistics professionals from the sample com-
and other newly industrialised countries which produce and panies. From the survey, GL practices commonly adopted world-
distribute products to the global market. To continue business wide included route planning to reduce mileage, improving energy
trading and untie some market restrictions, it is essential for Thai efficiency, and establishing green warehousing and distribution
practitioners to catch up with the global concern of sustainability centres. Changing transport modes was popular in Europe but
by considering an initiation of GL policy. rarely implemented in other regions. Moreover, emissions
According to the literature review, while the implementation of measuring and reporting as well as using alternative fuels were
GL might be influenced by several factors such as a company's generally conducted in the US and Europe but they were not
financial status, pressure from stakeholders, or top management generally applied in the Middle East or in the Asia Pacific region.
support (Lau, 2011; Lin and Ho, 2011; Lai and Wong, 2012; Regarding the measurement and analysis of air emissions, Zailani
Evangelista, 2014; Baz and Laguir, 2017), there is so far a lack of et al. (2011) employed a questionnaire-based survey to explore
empirical study to understand significant mechanisms for the GL perceptions of Malaysian logistics managers regarding the envi-
initiation in Thailand. Different countries, as stated by Lin and Ho ronmental impact which was related to their operations. The re-
(2011), can yield different results regarding environmental prac- sults indicated that more than half of Malaysian firms had never
tices. Furthermore, while many survey studies have explored monitored and/or measured the environmental impacts of their
common GL practices, there is still a lack of studies focusing on the logistics activities, and they also did not have a formal environ-
extent of the contribution those practices make to meeting com- mental policy or strategy. However, most of them showed will-
panies' goals or expectations. It is possible that an activity generally ingness to invest in green technology in order to become more
conducted within the logistics industry might not completely environmentally friendly. Among several logistics functions, the
satisfy the companies. This study, therefore, focuses on two ob- transportation sector was their focus area to initiate environmental
jectives. The first is to investigate factors influencing the adoption policies and strategies. Kim and Han (2011) then employed a
of green practices in the Thai logistics service industry. Secondly, confirmatory factor analysis study to develop multi-item scales for
this study also aims to rank the contributions of various GL activ- measuring GL practices. The data were collected from more than a
ities to two corporate goals: cost reduction and environmental hundred logistics companies in Korea. From this, GL practices were
protection, based upon the perspectives of Thai logistics practi- classified into three dimensions: internal environmental manage-
tioners. Based on the review of the GL literature, these two goals ment, environmental sourcing and packaging, and environmental
have been claimed as the primary reasons for logistics companies to process design.
establish green practices (Lau, 2011; Zhang et al., 2014; Murphy and Pieters et al. (2012) investigated green initiatives related to
Poist, 2003; Evangelista, 2014; Pålsson and Kov acs, 2014). Envi- physical distribution and transportation through a survey of 145
ronmental protection is also connected to a desire to enhance the LSPs in the Netherlands. All initiatives were classified towards four
corporate image and reputation towards achieving the aspects (internal and external approaches, and optimizing and
innovating). Examples of activities under each combination
 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14 3

approach are shown in the parentheses: ‘optimizing-internal ap- and the increase in truck utilisation. However, practitioners needed
proaches’ (e.g., eco-driving, managing transport loads), ‘opti- to consider the negative effect in terms of the difficulty to fully
mizing-external approaches’ (e.g., improving delivery planning utilize loading capacity on the return journeys. Moreover, the use of
with supply chain partners), ‘innovating-internal approaches’ (e.g., LHVs may pose obstacles in route planning since road infrastruc-
applying new types of vehicles and new software), and ‘innovating- ture (e.g., bridges, roundabouts, parking, and service stations) may
external approaches’ (e.g., green packaging, green ordering). The not always be suitable for LHVs. Legal regulations on the maximum
results showed that most of the initiatives focused on the load and size for trucks also varied among different countries.
optimizing-internal approach, followed by the innovating-internal
one. Similarly, Colicchia et al. (2013) explored environmental ini- 2.2. Factors influencing GL implementation
tiatives commonly carried out within LSPs, based on the interviews
of managers from medium- or large-sized companies in Italy. They This section presents an overview of empirical studies that
classified various green practices into two groups: intra- and inter- aimed to identify mechanisms for the adoption of GL activities. First
organisational practices. The latter was directly related to external of all, a survey from Eyefortransport (2007) investigated the key
collaborations. The results showed that initiatives concerning dis- drivers for companies to invest in GL. The results showed that
tribution strategies and transportation execution (e.g., using less compliance with governmental regulations became one of the main
polluting vehicles, planning for full vehicle loading, minimising reasons for the US and European companies, whereas it was less
transport distances) were generally found in Italian LSPs, while important for those in the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.
those related to inter-organisational practices such as packaging This might be a consequence of the fact that environmental regu-
management were rarely observed. Zhang et al. (2014) classified lations in developed countries were more strictly designed and
various GL activities into six groups on the basis of a questionnaire- enforced than those in developing countries. Other than this,
based survey of the Chinese logistics industry and factor analysis. improving customer relations, saving costs, improving energy ef-
The groups comprised ‘environmental management’, ‘low-carbon ficiency, and expressing corporate responsibility were considered
storage and packing’, ‘low-carbon transportation’, ‘fleet manage- as the common drivers among all regions.
ment’, ‘alternative energy’, and ‘logistics innovation’. Evangelista Lin and Ho (2008) examined factors that influenced LSPs' will-
(2014) presented a comprehensive literature review on the ingness to initiate GL practices through a questionnaire-based
implementation of GL practices, and conducted case studies of 13 survey in Taiwan. Their findings revealed that ‘explicitness of
Italian LSPs. The case studies indicated similar results to Pieters technology’ (a company's ability to learn and acquire green tech-
et al. (2012) and Colicchia et al. (2013), showing that most of the nology), ‘accumulation of technology’ (a company's experiences of
green initiatives undertaken by the sample companies related to implementing green technology), ‘organisational encouragement’
‘point’ actions which were managed internally by the companies (the leaders' commitment and support), ‘quality of human re-
(e.g., multimodal transport, changes of vehicle types, uses of sources’ (employees' abilities to learn new technology), ‘environ-
alternative fuels), while activities related to supply chain collabo- mental uncertainty’ (customers' requirements for green services
ration (e.g., recycling materials and packaging, calculating carbon and competitors' abilities to offer green practices), and ‘govern-
footprints) were less popular. Recently, Baz and Laguir (2017) mental support’ were all significant driving factors. Their next
employed qualitative interviews to examine the green practices study (Lin and Ho, 2011) again investigated determinant factors for
of LSPs in Morocco. At the end, the initiatives were classified into the adoption of GL practices through a survey of Chinese logistics
four groups: (i) ‘transport and vehicle use’ (e.g., using alternative companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen. All potential factors were
fuels, modal shift, modernization of vehicles); (ii) ‘warehousing and classified into three groups: technological, organisational, and
handling’ (e.g., reducing waste and water usage, using recycling environmental. The results showed that all technological factors
materials and eco-packaging); (iii) ‘environmental training and (benefits from adopting green technology; compatibility of tech-
control’ (e.g., training employees and partners, considering envi- nology with current values, experiences, and needs of the firms;
ronmental management systems such as ISO 14001); and (iv) and the complexity of such technology) and organisational factors
‘supply chain collaboration on green initiatives’. Again, it appeared (organisational support; quality of human resources; and company
that the initiatives most commonly conducted fell into the first two size) significantly affected practitioners' attitudes to implementing
groups which were considered as internal actions, while the ones GL. Unlike the environmental aspect, only some factors were sig-
related to external collaboration were rarely seen. Centobelli et al. nificant. Forces from laws and regulations as well as support from
(2017) also classified various green initiatives and investigated the government were the significant factors while pressure from
their diffusion among LSPs in Italy. The classification was conducted customers and changes in the competitive business environment
according to the aims, practices, and technologies employed by the were not. The insignificant factors contradicted the authors' pre-
practitioners. They revealed that, similar to a number of previous vious study in 2008 which has concluded that environmental un-
studies, the green practices mostly diffused among Italian logistics certainty was a significant driver. It was claimed in the 2011 study
firms were generally related to transportation, such as the uses of that most logistics companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen were
alternative fuels, alternative modes of transport, eco-driving, full small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which, when facing a
vehicle loading, route planning, etc. The main aims in implement- high degree of customer pressure and uncertainty in competitive
ing green practices were to reduce fuel usage for transportation and situations, always reacted differently from large companies. Due to
to reduce energy consumption in warehousing. their limited resources, small companies tended to give priority to
Rodrigues et al. (2015) proposed that the adoption of longer the improvement of their core business activities rather than
heavier vehicles (LHVs) could be another way to achieve green putting more resources into improving environmental
logistics operations. They provided a discussion about the effects of performance.
the adoption of LHVs from LSPs' perspectives, through a compre- Lai and Wong (2012), based upon exploratory interviews with
hensive literature review and empirical study using interviews and Chinese manufacturing exporters, identified four components of GL
a questionnaire survey. Overall, regarding the positive effect, management including: (i) procedure-based practices, (ii)
increasing the maximum capacity and size of trucks significantly evaluation-based practices, (iii) partner-based practices, and (iv)
lowered fuel consumption, GHG emissions, air pollution, and general environmental management practices. Procedure-based
operating costs, mainly due to the reduction of total transport miles practices mainly refer to formal documents or standard
4 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14

procedures regarding functions of environment-related divisions/ revealed various driving forces such as changes in the national
departments. Evaluation-based practices focus on evaluating and economy affecting the structure of the logistics industry, pressures
reporting GL performance as well as improving the performance on from customers, environmental concerns such as the decrease in
a continuous basis. Partner-based practices emphasise employee the availability of fossil fuels and the increase in their price, and the
training and coordination with external partners to pursue green requirement for efficiency improvements in logistics due to the
projects. Lastly, general management practices aim to maintain advancement of vehicle technology.
environmental standards and also to enhance the companies' im- A number of studies, on the other hand, focused on the inves-
age and reputation in environmental protection. This study tigation of barriers to the implementation of green practices. Ojo
employed a questionnaire-based survey and structural equation et al. (2014), for instance, discovered barriers to the adoption of
modelling to test a number of hypotheses. The results revealed that, green supply chain management (GSCM) in Nigerian construction
firstly, GL management had a positive association with companies' companies using a questionnaire-based survey. This study showed
environmental and operational performances. Secondly, pressure that ‘lack of public awareness’, ‘lack of knowledge about environ-
from customers significantly affected GL implementation. This, mental impacts’, ‘poor commitment by the top management’, ‘lack
again, contradicted the findings from Lin and Ho (2011) mentioned of legal enforcement by the government’, and ‘lack of resources’
earlier. The inconsistency might be caused by differences among signified the main factors preventing firms from adopting GSCM.
the sample groups. Lai and Wong (2012) conducted a survey on He et al. (2017) also investigated the main barriers to the estab-
manufacturing exporters while Lin and Ho (2011) focused on LSPs. lishment of low-carbon logistics systems and proposed strategies to
Greater pressure from customers might be placed upon manufac- cope with the barriers, based upon multiple case studies of LSPs in
turers than upon LSPs, since manufacturers directly contact the China. Six main barriers were revealed, including lack of awareness,
product consumers and encounter the exporting conditions. inconsistency in policies and regulations, lack of professionals, lack
Thirdly, economic pressures (cost savings and subsidies from the of appropriate infrastructure and facilities, low efficiency in oper-
government) had no association with the decision to initiate GL ations management, and disordered transport modes. Recently, Baz
programmes. Last but not least, high pressure from environmental and Laguir (2017) explored the main drivers and barriers to the
regulations reinforced the intensity of customer pressure, and this adoption of green initiatives using qualitative interviews in
made the positive relationship between customer pressure and GL Moroccan LSPs. From their study, the obtained drivers fell into two
implementation stronger. However, the regulatory pressure was groups: internal drivers (management support) and external
not significantly associated with the economic pressures. Generally drivers (support and requirements from partners, customers, and
speaking, governmental regulations in China still lacked adequate the government). The main barriers discovered in this situation
power to boost financial motivations for Chinese manufacturers to were the lack of financial resources and high investment costs, the
pursue GL programmes. lack of well-defined regulations, the lack of customers' and part-
Pazirandeh and Jafari (2013) employed a web-based survey to ners' awareness, and the uncertain payback on the investment.
investigate the relationships between a sustainability strategy, From Sections 2.1 and 2.2, many GL studies focused on the
corporate efforts to conduct GL, and logistics performances. The investigation of drivers and obstacles to GL implementation, as well
survey focused on Swedish logistics managers of companies not as relationships among management constructs, within a particular
listed as LSPs but as purchasers of transport services. The findings country. Moreover, common GL practices among logistics practi-
from structural equation modelling indicated that in-house sus- tioners were generally explored by previous studies. However, in
tainability strategies had positive effects on the efforts to initiate actual practice, common activities do not necessarily provide the
green transport operations and procurement. The green procure- greatest benefit nor mostly satisfy the practitioners. To date, there
ment then had positive effects both on logistics effectiveness and has been a lack of study considering the prioritisation of various
efficiency. Zhang et al. (2014) also identified driving factors for the activities regarding their contributions to the corporate goals of GL
adoption of green practices in the Chinese logistics industry and implementation, including cost reduction and environmental pro-
determined their relationships using a questionnaire survey and tection. These are considered necessary for companies to decide to
factor analysis. The main driving factors that emerged from this initiate a GL policy in the future in order to enhance their
study were the environmental management strategy, mandatory competitive advantage. The gaps left by previous studies bring up
and normative factors, and supply chain pressure. Evangelista two research questions. Firstly, among several GL activities, which
(2014) revealed the driving factors for the adoption of GL prac- ones should be preliminarily initiated in order to greater pursue the
tices based on case studies of 13 Italian LSPs. This paper also pre- goals of cost reduction and environmental protection? To respond
sented a systematic literature review to explore the factors. The to these questions, this study employed a questionnaire to ask lo-
review showed that potential factors included pressures from both gistics practitioners to rank seven groups of GL activities based on
internal and external stakeholders, customer relationships and the contributions to each goal. The obtained ranking orders were
long-term contracts, corporate desire or management commit- cross-compared to the ranking orders of those activities based on
ments, organisational support, regulatory pressures, and govern- the current implementation levels within the industry. Secondly,
mental support. Pålsson and Kova cs (2014) investigated factors that what are the significant factors associated with the extent of GL
influenced LSPs to reduce transportation emissions though a web- implementation for Thai LSPs? This question would also support
based survey of logistics companies in Sweden. The results showed whether the factors claimed by the literature of other countries
that the significant factors could be classified into three groups, could be generalised to the Thai logistics industry, as a represen-
including: (i) ‘image motives’ (to be seen as an environmentally tative of newly industrialised countries. To answer this, the survey
friendly and social responsibility company), (ii) ‘economic motives’ respondents were asked to rate their current practices and situa-
(to enhance profitability and long-term competitive advantage), tions towards a number of rating scales. The ANOVA technique was
and (iii) ‘external drivers’ (to respond to stakeholder requirements). then used to investigate the significance of each factor. Following
Liimatainen et al. (2015) then investigated, through Delphi surveys, this, the initial research frameworks constructed on the basis of the
driving factors forcing road freight logistics companies to reduce literature review are presented in Section 3, and the research
CO2 emissions from their operations in the next 15 years. They methodology is then fully described in Section 4.
 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14 5

3. Research framework and hypotheses 3.1. Operating period (H1)

LSPs, as defined by Evangelista et al. (2013), offer various kinds As stated by Lau (2011), successful GL implementation requires
of service activities for shippers. Not only the transportation of professional experience. Well-established service providers there-
goods, but also other tasks might be integrated into the service fore tend to initiate more GL policies than newly established firms.
offering, such as the management of warehousing and inventory, Beskovnik and Jakomin (2010) also supported that a long-term
tracking and controlling physical flows and information flows along contract between shippers and LSPs was an important driver for
the supply chain, or conducting secondary assembly. However, the initiation of GL practices by logistics companies. Generally
while there are several kinds of logistics services, this study focuses speaking, LSPs may need a period of time to absorb customers'
merely on road freight transportation. This is due to the fact that green requirements and the additional costs. This implies that the
the transportation sector is the major area where most logistics operating period may be one of the antecedent factors for the
companies initiate environmental policies and strategies (Zailani implementation of GL practices by logistics companies. The oper-
et al., 2011), and it is one of the two major functions (another is ating period (since the company was founded) is investigated
warehousing) served by most LSPs (Lin and Ho, 2011). Furthermore, through a 1e3 rating scale, including: (1) 1e5 years, (2) 5e10 years,
it is claimed as a substantial source of environmental impact and and (3) more than 10 years.
energy consumption in the logistics system (Lin and Ho, 2011,
Abduaziz et al., 2015, Gonzalez-Benito and Gonzalez-Benito, 3.2. Company size (H2)
2006b).
For this study, several GL practices for truck fleet logistics In terms of the general business practices, as discovered by Min
mentioned by previous studies have been synthesised (Zhang et al., and Galle (2001) in a survey of US companies, the degree of
2014; Eyefortransport, 2007; Lau, 2011; Colicchia et al., 2013; Kim involvement in green purchasing had a positive correlation with
and Han, 2011; Centobelli et al., 2017; Evangelista, 2014; Pieters firm size. Similarly, Kalkowski (2007), who reported a survey of
et al., 2012; Rodrigues et al., 2015; Liimatainen et al., 2015), and more than a thousand people from the membership of the ‘Sus-
seven groups of activities are presented, including: tainable Packaging Coalition’ and subscribers to ‘Packaging Digest
and Converting Magazine’, found that larger companies were

Modal shift (e.g., changing transport mode from road to rail or to highly likely to innovate in green packaging and sustainability
integrated delivery systems; intermodal and multimodal practices. Similarly, Tay et al. (2015) revealed that larger firms were
transport; combined transport) more likely to engage in sustainable supply chain management, and

Eco-driving (e.g., training drivers to drive in an environmentally they were more willing to participate in green activities in collab-
friendly mode; assessing and monitoring drivers' performances oration with their supply chain partners. This is probably because
through driving behaviour and fuel consumption; optimizing large-sized companies are considered to dominate the market
energy efficiency of the vehicles through maintenance or (Pieters et al., 2012). They, therefore, are more visible to external
repairing strategies) stakeholders whose interests are inclined to be more environ-

Reverse logistics (e.g., taking back used products or packaging mentally friendly. In addition, larger companies tend to have a
materials from customers for reusing or recycling; collaborating more negative impact on the environment. They, therefore, tend to
with customers on recycling programmes) devote more attention to environmental activities in order to

Green packaging (e.g., using recyclable or reusable packaging restore their image and to relieve social pressures (Gonzalez-Benito
and containers; substituting environmentally friendly materials and Gonzalez-Benito, 2006a, Lin and Ho, 2011, Lau, 2011, Henri and
for the harmful ones; reducing packaging usage; reusing prod- Journeault, 2008). Firm size can be classified based on the number
uct packages; recycling wastes from transport and warehousing) of employees which in this case allows for division into three cat-

Alternative energy and vehicle technology (e.g., using alternative egories, including: (1) fewer than 50 people, (2) 50e200 people,
energy/fuel sources, such as biofuels, that cause less emission; and (3) more than 200 people.
switching to modern or more energy-efficient vehicles; using
hybrid electric vehicles)
3.3. Financial status (H3)

Vehicle routing (e.g., optimizing transport routes to reduce miles;
optimizing transport load distribution; full vehicle loading; us-
A survey from Eyefortransport (2007) showed a strong associ-
ing IT applications for vehicle routing and scheduling, such as
ation between companies' awareness of environmental issues and
planning and routing software or internet matching system)
their annual revenue. This implies that richer companies tend to

Green administration (e.g., selecting, auditing, or assessing
give a greater priority to GL policies than lower-income companies
partners based on their environmental performances; promot-
do. Many articles also revealed that higher-revenue firms generally
ing employee awareness of environmental protection and en-
employed state-of-the-art and green technologies to support lo-
ergy saving; establishing incentives for encouraging employees
gistics practices as well as to manage environmental issues in lo-
to improve environmental performance; measuring and moni-
gistics. This is because they have sufficient resources and
toring environmental performance; training staff, employees,
professionals. In contrast, an initial cost of implementing new
and operators; developing formal environmental policies)
technologies is likely to be the main barrier for the low-income
ones (Murphy and Poist, 2003; Eyefortransport, 2007; Lau, 2011;
In order to confirm the significance of factors influencing the
Lin and Ho, 2011; Gonzalez-Benito and Gonzalez-Benito, 2006a;
extent of GL implementation, as mentioned, the testing of statistical
He et al., 2017). However, an argument has been also raised. As
hypotheses needs to be employed. The hypotheses were identified
Henri and Journeault (2008) note, although rich companies may
according to theoretical claims from the literature. To sum up, six
have bigger budgets and more resources, these may not be allo-
factors (broken down into nine hypotheses: H1-H9) were devised
cated for solving environmental issues but for supporting other
for Thai LSPs, including:
purposes. Here, the company annual turnover is used as a proxy of
6 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14

the financial status, and it is assessed through a 1e3 rating scale: (1) practices, to motivate and influence employees' awareness of green
less than 50 million baht, (2) 50e200 million baht, and (3) more issues, as well as to establish related policies and strategies
than 200 million baht. (Gonzalez-Benito and Gonzalez-Benito, 2006a, Lin and Ho, 2011,
Ojo et al., 2014, He et al., 2017). Successful implementation of green
3.4. Service areas (H4) activities also requires employees' innovative capability which is a
consequence of effective training and communication programmes
As mentioned by a number of management articles, the degree (Lin and Ho, 2011; Zhu et al., 2008; Murphy and Poist, 2003; Lai and
of internationalisation was associated with a firm's environmental Wong, 2012; Maas et al., 2014). Furthermore, since performance
management practices (Gonzalez-Benito and Gonzalez-Benito, assessment is necessary for improvement, high level managers
2006a, Oberhofer and Dieplinger, 2014, Delmas and Toffel, 2004). who establish self-assessment programmes should be able to
This implies that firms who mainly interact with international identify weak areas and drive their teams to continuously improve.
stakeholders tend to be more eco-friendly in their processes than Green initiatives are then likely to be established by them. Last but
those with a local focus. The service areas, investigated through a not least, GL activities tend to be driven by a leader who focuses on
1e3 rating scale, include (1) only domestic shipping, (2) only in- the firm's image and reputation regarding societal and environ-
ternational shipping, and (3) both domestic and international mental protection. As revealed by Pazirandeh and Jafari (2013),
shipping. companies with strategies relating to sustainability as well as with
environmental certifications always make more effort to green
their operations.
3.5. Pressure from customers (H5) From these propositions, organisational support to implement
GL is broken down into four constructs, partly adapted from Lai and
Based on the stakeholder theory, business firms initiate activ- Wong (2012), as shown below.
ities mainly to satisfy their customers (Lin and Ho, 2011). Positive
relationships between organisational efforts to conduct green ac- a. Procedure-based practices (H6), which are investigated
tivities and requirements from customers were also mentioned by a through the three following items:
number of academic articles (Lin and Ho, 2011; Christmann, 2004;
Our firm has established formal policies concerning environ-
Lee, 2008, Kalkowski, 2007, Lai and Wong, 2012; Ojo et al., 2014; mental management.
Martinsen and Bjo € rklund, 2012; Oberhofer and Dieplinger, 2014;

Environmental management procedures have been formally
Murphy and Poist, 2003). However, this claim might not be documented.
generalised to LSPs who, in general, do not directly contact end-
We have a department responsible for environmental
user customers. The demand for environmental protection is nor- management.
mally transferred to manufacturers to design products and pro- b. Evaluation-based practices (H7), which are investigated
cesses to be environmentally-friendly, but it is still questionable through the three following items:
whether the manufacturers also put such pressure on their LSPs. As
Environmental performance is periodically assessed.
stated by a number of articles, the influence of customer pressure
Environmental performance is formally reported to
on green practices may be varied by firms' positions in the supply executives.
chain (Oberhofer and Dieplinger, 2014, Lin and Ho, 2011, Igarashi
Environmental performance has been continuously improved.
et al., 2013). Since the pressure is qualitative in nature, it is here c. Partner-based practices (H8), which are investigated through
investigated through three following items, partly adapted from Lai the three following items:
and Wong (2012).
Topics relating to environmental management are always
included in staff training.

Our customers encourage or drive us to be ISO 14000 certified.
The results of our environmental performance are reported to

Our environmental practices are periodically audited by our our customers.
customers.
Our suppliers/business partners are supported or encouraged

Our customers encourage or drive us to minimise GHG emis- to follow our environmental management practices.
sions or to report our carbon footprint from the transportation. d. General environmental management practices (H9), which are
investigated through the four following items:
For this study, each item is evaluated using a 1e5 Likert scale in
Our environmental management practices are given promi-
order to rate the extent of these practices in each company. The nent visibility in our annual report.
scale ranges from (1) never consider this, (2) low, (3) medium, (4)
We are ISO 14000 certified.
high, to (5) very high. The same scale is also used for H6 e H9
We purchase from suppliers that are ISO 14000 certified.
described below. In the analysis phase, the average score of these
Our firm conducts activities relating to environmental sus-
three questions is computed for each respondent (each company) tainability (e.g., corporate social responsibility, sustainable
in order to represent the overall level of customer pressure. For the development, carbon footprint assessment).
sake of hypothesis testing, the score is used to classify the re-
spondents into three groups, including ‘Low’ (average score < 2.5),
‘Moderate’ (average score ¼ 2.5 to 3.5), and ‘High’ (average
score > 3.5). The same procedure is applied to the calculation of 4. Methodology
organisational support level (H6 e H9).
The data was collected through a questionnaire-based survey.
3.6. Organisational support (H6 e H9) Statistical analysis techniques were employed to test the hypoth-
eses and to identify the ranking order of the GL activities. In-
Organisational support is claimed as a critical factor for the terviews of industry experts were then used to provide causal
adoption of any new policy, and the top management becomes a mechanisms of the quantitative results. Below, Section 4.1 provides
key component of this. For GL, top management should have the details about the questionnaire design as well as the process of data
ability and authority to allocate necessary resources to green collection. Section 4.2 then describes the analysis process.
 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14 7

4.1. The survey design The final version of the questionnaire consists of four parts. The
first part relates to general information of the respondents
Methodologies employed for this study were formulated on the including their position and email as well as company's
basis of empirical studies where conclusions and inferences were geographical location, operating period, number of employees,
made based upon actually occurring situations (Flynn et al., 1990). turnover, and service areas. The second part asks the respondents
The study started by a review of the literature with the aims to to rate their practices, through the 1e5 Likert scale, in terms of the
synthesise GL activities as well as to determine hypotheses con- pressure from customers and organisational support. The third part
cerning antecedent factors of GL implementation. The conse- investigates the level of their implementation of each GL activity
quences of the literature review were the lists of nine hypotheses using 1e4 Likert scale. The definitions of each activity as well as the
and seven groups of GL activities, as presented in Section 3. A draft meanings of the scale are clearly described within the question-
questionnaire was then designed according to this. Next, a pilot naire (using Thai language). Essentially, level 1 means that the
study was performed. Interviews of industry experts were con- company has never thought about that activity. Level 2 reveals that
ducted to confirm the content validity of the measurement in- the company has initiated a plan to carry out that activity in the
strument. Content validity relates to subjective judgments of field near future, or that a feasibility study is being processed. For level 3,
experts, ensuring that the instrument contains comprehensive that activity has been partly implemented to some routes, vehicles,
items which truly measure what it is intended to measure (Flynn warehouses, or service areas, or it is still at the initial period of
et al., 1990). The questionnaire was presented to five experts implementation. Level 4, the greatest level, indicates that the ac-
(four of them were senior executives of two large-scale truck fleet tivity has been fully implemented. Also, the results have been
logistics companies and another one was an academic lecturer in monitored and reported. The final part of the questionnaire asks
logistics management), and they were asked to comment on the respondents to provide the ranking orders of the seven GL ac-
whether they recognised any irrelevant items not connected to GL tivities in terms of their contributions to cost reduction and envi-
concepts in the lists as well as whether they considered other ronmental protection (separated ranking order between the two
relevant practices and factors that should be added. They were also goals).
asked to comment on the length and the format of the question- The next step was to distribute the questionnaires to large
naire. Following this, the questionnaire was redesigned. Prior to samples of truck fleet service companies in Thailand. For this study,
conducting the actual survey, the questionnaires were distributed middle managers (or upper level managers) were the target group
to 30 respondents in order to confirm the reliability of the mea- of the survey since they should be more knowledgeable about
surement items. The list of the companies and the details of their environmental issues in logistics operations (Murphy and Poist,
contact information were gathered from the website of the 2003). The list of the companies and the details of their contact
Department of Business Development (http://www.dbd.go.th), information, again, were gathered from the website of the
which is under the jurisdiction of the Thai government (only the list Department of Business Development. In total, 2000 companies
of truck fleet logistics companies was selected). They were tele- were sampled from the list. A stratified random sampling technique
phoned and asked for their commitment to respond before the was used to ensure that the questionnaires were distributed to all
questionnaires were sent out, either by email or by post. The reli- parts of the country. The survey was carried out during May 2017.
ability was analysed towards the Cronbach's Alpha values (Flynn All members of the sampling frames received a questionnaire with
et al., 1990). Only the constructs broken down into multiple mea- a postage-paid return envelope as well as a cover letter explaining
surement items were tested, including ‘pressure from customers’, the purpose of the study. The letter also assured respondents that
‘procedure-based practices’, ‘evaluation-based practices’, ‘partner- the aggregation of the results from all respondents would be re-
based practices’, ‘general environmental management practices’, ported rather than individual answers, and thus their identities
and the overall level of GL implementation which was measured would be kept confidential. At the end of July 2017, 311 usable
towards the seven activities. The results of the reliability testing are questionnaires were returned, representing a response rate of
shown in Table 1. 15.55%. This response rate is considered comparable to many other
The results show that the Cronbach's Alpha values, computed survey studies in GL and environmental management (Lai and
using Minitab software, for all constructs range from 0.844 to 0.970. Wong, 2012; Husted and Allen, 2006; Martinsen and Bjo € rklund,
Based on the rule of thumb, a Cronbach's alpha value greater than 2012; Kim and Han, 2011), and the number of responses is also
0.6 is acceptable for inferring that a group of items is homogeneous close to the required sample size for a 95% confidence level of the
or internally consistent (Nunnally, 1967; Saraph et al., 1989). Since result, based upon the Taro Yamane formula when the population
the results are all over 0.6, this indicates that the measurement size is around 4000 companies (Yamane, 1967). As a result of the
items developed here are adequately reliable, and that the items stratified random sampling, the 311 respondents were from all six
forming the same construct are measuring the same aspect. The regional groups of Thai provinces, including: Bangkok and Central
assumption behind the acceptable degree of internal consistency is Thailand 45.01%, Eastern Thailand 18.65%, Northern Thailand 9.0%,
that those items are not really measuring the same thing; they are North-eastern Thailand 11.58%, Southern Thailand 9.65%, Western
measures of different things which are part of the same aspect Thailand 5.15%, and unspecified 0.96%. The obtained sample sizes of
(Nunnally, 1967; Singh and Smith, 2006). each group are considered proportionate to the population size.
The analysis of the received data is described in the next section.

Table 1
Cronbach's Alpha values. 4.2. The analysis process
Constructs Cronbach's Alpha
First of all, the ranking orders of the seven GL activities were
Pressure from customers (three items) 0.879
Procedure-based practices (three items) 0.891 elicited towards two aspects: their contributions to (i) corporate
Evaluation-based practices (three items) 0.956 cost reduction and (ii) environmental protection. Since the data
Partner-based practices (three items) 0.970 was in the ordinal scale, the median was used to represent the
General environmental management practices (four items) 0.912 central tendency of the data, instead of the mean, and the ranking
Overall level of GL implementation (seven items) 0.844
orders were determined based upon the medians. Kruskal-Wallis
8 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14

and Mann-Whitney tests (using Minitab software) were therefore the questionnaire design (mentioned in Section 4.1). The product
used to examine the significance of the differences. types that were mainly delivered by the five companies inter-
Before testing the hypotheses to identify the antecedent factors, viewed include metals and steel, parcels, food, beverages, and
the overall level of GL implementation within each company was consumer goods. Their opinions regarding the survey results, in
determined towards the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method. combination with claims from the literature, were used to form the
It is one of the most prevalently used aggregating methods due to discussion on managerial insights.
its transparency and ease of understanding (Zhou et al., 2006).
Based on the SAW method, the overall level (aggregated score: Ij ) 5. Results and managerial insights
that company j has adopted GL can be computed as follows.
From 311 returned questionnaires, Table 2 summarises the
X
n profiles of the respondents. It shows that most of the respondent
Ij ¼ Wi xij ; i ¼ 1; 2; …; n (1) companies have been established for more than five years. How-
i¼1 ever, there are only 16% of the respondents which can be consid-
ered as large-scale LSPs employing more than 200 workers.
where xij denotes the level that company j has adopted activity i
Similarly, according to the company annual turnover, only around
(1e4 Likert scale), and Wi is the relative weight of activity i. The
16% of the respondents reported the turnover of more than 200
weights indicate an assumption that each activity differently re-
million baht per year, while around half of them reported the
flects the entire picture of GL implementation. Generally speaking,
turnover lower than 50 million baht. Almost 40% of the re-
if the weight of activity i is higher than that of activity k, a company
spondents provide transportation services to foreign destinations.
conducting only activity i has a clearer image of GL practitioner
In terms of the shareholders' nationality, around 90% of the re-
than another one who only carries out activity k. The weights were
spondents are Thai companies without foreign participation. Based
here determined by the Rank Order Centroid (ROC) method (Barron
on their responses, Section 5.1 presents the ranking orders of
and Barrett, 1996). ROC generates the weights for the seven GL
several GL activities according to the contributions to cost reduc-
activities only from their ranking order. This requires less cognitive
tion and environmental protection. Section 5.2 then presents the
effort than other weighting methods that need a decision maker to
antecedent factors for the adoption of GL practices within Thai LSPs.
assign crisp values of weights using more complex methods, and a
number of studies have found that ROC weights can provide more
5.1. Ranking orders of GL activities
intuitive results than many other rank-based weighting methods
(Ahn and Park, 2008; Sureeyatanapas, 2016). For ROC, the formula
In terms of the ranking order of the contribution to cost
to compute the weight for activity i is shown in equation (2).
reduction, the Kruskal-Wallis test gives the p-value ¼ 0.00 which is
less than the level of significance (0.05). This means, based on the
1Xn
1 perspectives of Thai logistics practitioners, that two or more GL
WCi or WEi ¼ (2)
n ri activities make different contributions to the cost reduction. Then,
i¼i
the Mann-Whitney test was performed to examine which pairs are
where ri is the ranking order of activity i in terms of its contribu- significantly different. The results are shown in Table 3, indicating
tions to corporate cost reduction (or environmental protection). that ‘eco-driving’ is rated by most managers as the activity
The most important activity is ranked first (ri ¼ 1), while the least contributing most to the cost reduction. The ranking orders for
important one has ri ¼ n, n is the number of activities being ‘alternative energy’, ‘modal shift’, and ‘vehicle routing’ are found to
considered. Here n ¼ 7. Therefore, two sets of the weight were be insignificantly different, and they share the second place in the
computed for each activity, including WCi (the weight of activity i ranking table. Lastly, ‘green packaging’, ‘reverse logistics’, and
which represents its contribution to cost reduction) and WEi (the ‘green administration’ are found to be the activities making only
weight representing the contribution to environmental protection).
These aspects are viewed as two main goals for a company to
Table 2
pursue environmental activities. The final weight for activity i was
The profiles of survey respondents.
the average between these two indices (this is based on an
assumption of equal importance between the two goals of GL Company characteristics The number of Percentage
respondents
implementation), as shown in equation (3).
Operating period
1-5 years 50 16.0
W þ WEi
Wi ¼ Ci (3) 5-10 years 107 34.5
2 >10 years 154 49.5
Company size
Finally, the overall level of GL implementation within each <50 employees 154 49.5
company j ðIj Þ could be determined through equation (1). Ij was 50-200 employees 107 34.5
now in the form of a continuous variable, and then used to examine >200 employees 50 16.0
factors influencing the adoption of GL for LSPs through One-way Financial status
<50 million baht 144 46.3
ANOVA. This statistical technique is commonly used to test if 50-200 million baht 116 37.3
there are statistically significant differences among the level means >200 million baht 51 16.4
of a prospective factor. If, for any factors, the significance was found, Service area
Tukey's multiple comparison test was next used to investigate Only domestic shipping 191 61.4
Only international shipping 6 1.9
which means differ from the rest. All the tests were performed
Both domestic and international shipping 114 36.7
through Minitab software. Shareholders' nationality
The results were then presented to six industry experts. Five of 100% Thai 277 89.0
them were the top-level managers of large-scale LSPs in Thailand, Thai > Foreigners 17 5.5
and another was an academic lecturer in logistics management. Foreigners > Thais 7 2.3
100% Foreigners 10 3.2
Three of them were the same persons invited for the pilot study of
 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14 9

Table 3
Descriptive statistics of the ranking orders of the contributions to cost reduction for seven GL activities.

Ranking order Activities Median Mode Mean Standard deviation

1st Eco-driving 1 1 1.99 1.61

2nd Alternative energy 3 2 3.57 1.60
Modal shift 3 3 3.59 1.90
Vehicle routing 4 4 3.73 1.61
3rd Green packaging 5 5,6 4.94 1.71
Reverse logistics 5 7 5.02 1.94
Green administration 6 6 5.14 1.53

Table 4
Descriptive statistics of the ranking orders of the contributions to environmental protection for seven GL activities.

Ranking order Activities Median Mode Mean Standard deviation

1st Eco-driving 1 1 2.36 1.85

2nd Alternative energy 3 2 3.53 1.78
Modal shift 4 2,3 4.04 1.99
Vehicle routing 4 3 3.76 1.60
3rd Green packaging 5 5 4.44 1.80
Green administration 5 5 4.46 1.82
4th Reverse logistics 6 7 5.34 1.80

minor contributions to the cost saving (their ranking orders show emitted from the vehicle engine.
no statistically significant difference). In terms of the second-ranked activities, both pros and cons of
Regarding the contribution to environmental protection (see such activities were mentioned by the managers. Switching to
Table 4), the p-value from the Kruskal-Wallis test is also equal to alternative energy, first of all, attracted LSPs in terms of the lower
0.00 indicating a significant difference among the ranking orders of fuel price, but many concerns were also raised. For instance, natural
the seven activities. The pairwise Mann-Whitney test was then gas vehicles (NGV) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) which had been
performed to classify the rankings. The results are similar to the introduced as lower-priced fuels than diesel possibly came with
ranking order of the cost reduction in terms of the first and the lower truck utilisation. This was because, in Thailand, natural gas
second ranked (groups of) activities. The only point of difference is fuelling stations were still rarely seen, and they were located long
for the activity ‘reverse logistics’ in which its ranking order is distances away from each other. Moreover, the current equipment
significantly poorer than the group of ‘green packaging’ and ‘green and configuration of the stations still consumed a long time for
administration’. Such a similarity supports a managerial insight, one-time refuelling. These conditions affected route planning and
revealed by many environmental management studies, that efforts time control. In addition, for natural gas, the maintenance costs for
to lessen sources of pollution and consumption of natural resources the vehicles were also higher. From the interviews, alternative
always lead to cost savings (Hart and Ahuja, 1996; Henri and energy was still considerably attractive for logistics practitioners
Journeault, 2009; Pe rez-Calderon et al., 2012; Ramanathan et al., regarding the overall cost savings but it needed to be intensely
2010; Evangelista, 2014). driven and supported by the government, especially in terms of the
Regarding the ‘eco-driving’, the top-ranked activities in both locations of fuelling stations and the available tax benefits. In terms
aspects, all interviewed managers agreed that driving behaviour of the environment, the interviewed managers recognised that the
and engine performance were among the most critical factors to combustion of natural gas emitted lower levels of CO2 and other
control the fuel costs of transportation, and this was the main cost greenhouse gases and particulates when compared to diesel.
for logistics services. During the follow-up interviews, some sug- Although NGV had been employed for only around 5e10% of their
gestions were given. Firstly, the drivers should be trained about trucks due to the concerns mentioned earlier, a number of inter-
driving at suitable speeds for different loads and routes, proper viewed managers still believed that the display of this information
techniques for changing gear and controlling the clutch, brake and on their published reports could enhance their firms' image
accelerator pedals, and given information concerning preventive regarding environmental care.
maintenance cycles, etc. Secondly, the performance of each driver, ‘Modal shift’ was next discussed. A few managers noted that
particularly in terms of the rate of fuel consumption (kilometres/ they were planning to implement road-rail intermodal transport
litre), should be assessed and monitored. These days, the driving services in the near future. Reducing operating costs was the main
performance can be simply tracked by GPS or other technologies. reason for this change. Rail transport, however, still raised a num-
Some managers remarked that their average consumption rate ber of concerns. For example, it relied on double or triple handling
considerably decreased after providing training to the drivers and while transport by truck could provide single handling and door-to-
carrying out the performance monitoring through GPS. Thirdly, the door service. Moreover, multimodal transport always required
vehicle suppliers were also important for the effectiveness of eco- collaboration with partnerships in which uncertainty in business
driving. Most managers stated that in general, the training of eco- dealings might occur. Rail freight, therefore, would be worthwhile
driving was initially performed by the suppliers. Based on the in- only with large product volumes and long-distance transport.
terviews, the focus on eco-driving behaviour and fleet maintenance Furthermore, the effectiveness of rail freight depends heavily on
contributed greatly to the cost savings, mainly because of the the rail network and infrastructure as well as its timetable. The
reduced fuel consumption and maintenance cost, as well as the trade-off between cost and service level was also mentioned during
increase in vehicle efficiency. Not only this, many companies pro- the interviews. Regarding the environmental aspects, most man-
moted it as a green activity to save global energy consumption, to agers believed that rail transport consumed less energy and re-
minimise the rate of accidents, and to improve the quality of air leases less CO2 per product unit than road transport. However, from
10 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14

academic research, this belief is still questionable since the ad- carbon footprint report for customers.
vantages of rail freight (in terms of the emissions and energy ‘Reverse logistics’ fell in the last group from both aspects; its
consumption) over trucks vary according to many factors such as modal scores were all equal to seven. This indicated that most Thai
loading weights, distance and route characteristics, types of train LSPs did not realise the benefits of this activity. Most interviewed
and fuel sources, country-specific emission factors, and so forth managers claimed that the policy of reverse logistics was normally
(Givoni et al., 2009; Garcia-Alvarez et al., 2013; Kirschstein and created and requested by the customers. The service providers,
Meisel, 2015). again, did not take any direct benefit from this in terms of the cost
‘Vehicle routing’, another second-ranked activity, was also seen saving. This might be beneficial for customers and manufacturing
by the interviewed managers as an effective way to save costs. firms who managed logistics operations themselves, but not for
Vehicle routing aimed to find an optimal solution to serve a set of third-party logistics providers. Some managers believed that, in
customers located around the distribution centre, towards a fleet of terms of the environment, although reverse logistics helped in
trucks with varying capacities (Braekers et al., 2016). Minimisations reducing waste, most product-owner companies created this ac-
of time, distance, and/or total cost were always the objective(s) for tivity with the actual aim of saving costs from backhaul in logistics,
this. Two managers pointed out that route conditions concerning and not because of the aim to take care of the environment.
safety factors and traffic congestion were always integrated in their With reference to the literature, as revealed by Lau (2011) who
vehicle routing problems since the rate of accidents was one of compared GL practices between China and Japan, the consideration
their focuses. When considering the environmental aspect, vehicle of alternative green materials as well as the creation of a unique
routing was directly associated with reductions in fuel consump- business system for sustainability were more likely to be seen in
tion and air emissions. Nevertheless, the successful implementa- Japanese manufacturers, while Chinese companies tended to be
tion of vehicle routing techniques, mainly based on mathematical more concerned about direct cost-saving activities. The phenom-
solutions, depended heavily on the capabilities of human resources. enon found in China seems to be similar to that found in Thailand. A
‘Green packaging’ and ‘green administration’ were ranked third, survey from Eyefortransport (2007) supported that logistics com-
indicating that they made only minor contributions to cost reduc- panies in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East focused more intensively
tion and environmental protection for LSPs. Opinions from the on activities relating to the increase of operational efficiency and
managers when interviewed were typically similar to the survey the decrease of fuel bills. These characteristics reflect the market of
responses. In terms of the green packaging, they stated that LSPs cost competition, rather than value creation and image competition
were not the main party to consider recycling, reusing, or changing as found in Japan and many other developed countries. This also
product packaging to be made by environmentally friendly mate- explains why in Thailand, green innovations that require supply
rials. Their customers were actually the ones who managed and chain collaboration, such as reverse logistics systems and packaging
took direct benefits from these considerations. A few managers technology, have not been widely implemented or even acknowl-
remarked that the aspect of green materials could be considered for edged by logistics practitioners. Within the Thai logistics industry,
warehousing facilities as well, such as trays, storage boxes, or pal- as stated by most of the interviewees, research and development
lets, but the cost savings from these were not really significant. efforts in green technology are still rarely observed.
Regarding the environmental protection, they similarly all agreed To deeper understand the characteristics of the Thai logistics
that ‘green packaging’ made a great contribution to slow down the industry, the implementation levels of the seven GL activities were
consumption of natural resources, but it was the customer's re- further compared (through the data from the third part of the
sponsibility to design, change, and manage this. For ‘green questionnaire). The Kruskal-Wallis test also gives the p-
administration’ (e.g., providing employee training or establishing value ¼ 0.00. That means two or more activities have different
regulations to save water, paper, or electricity in the office build- levels of implementation. Then, the Mann-Whitney test was per-
ing), all interviewees affirmed that these activities had already been formed. The results are shown in Table 5 which indicates that ‘eco-
conducted within their companies for long periods of time. The driving’ and ‘vehicle routing’ are commonly seen in Thai logistics
main aims were to create a good corporate image as well as to build practitioners (their implementation scores are statistically insig-
up a cost-saving culture within the firm. However, they did not nificantly different), followed by ‘green administration’. The rest
expect a significant saving from these. Also, some of the re- are grouped as the third-ranked activities indicating that they are
spondents frankly stated that, based upon their experiences, the implemented the least within the industry. The mode of the last
training of staff and campaigns for in-house environmental pro- group is only ‘1’ meaning that a large number of respondents have
tection did not make any big change for the environment, never considered those activities. Overall, it is observable that
compared to the establishment of the other GL initiatives green activities which are highly likely to be adopted and diffused
mentioned previously. However, one of the interviewed managers among Thai practitioners rely mainly on behaviour changes,
suggested that the trend of green administration was shifting to without intensive requirements of advanced technology or high
serving customers' demand for carbon footprint labels. His com- investment. Examples of behaviour-change activities are the min-
pany was planning to enhance staff capabilities to calculate GHG imisation of fuel consumption by merely controlling driving modes
emissions from the entire transportation process and to provide a or doing preventive maintenance (‘eco-driving’), and the reduction

Table 5
Descriptive statistics of the implementation level for seven GL activities.

Ranking order Activities Median Mode Mean Standard deviation

1st Eco-driving 3 3 2.74 0.99

Vehicle routing 3 3 2.62 1.09
2nd Green administration 2 3 2.40 0.91
3rd Alternative energy 2 1 2.09 0.99
Reverse logistics 2 1 2.06 1.08
Green packaging 2 1 2.01 0.99
Modal shift 2 1 1.94 1.05
 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14 11

of transport miles through applying routing techniques (‘vehicle assumption. The results show that around 70% of all group samples
routing’). ‘Green administration’ is also commonly performed, (from 26 factor levels) form a normal distribution. Most of the rest
probably because of its ease of implementation and small invest- only marginally fail the test with the evidence of the p-values
ment, although its results do not seem to respond significantly to slightly lower than 0.05. It is considered here that for the data with
the corporate goals. The findings also imply that practitioners a large number of observations as well as the satisfaction of the
nowadays, regarding GL practices, are not doing completely as they previous two assumptions, only small departures from normality
want or intend to do. For instance, ‘alternative energy’ and ‘modal should not significantly affect the reliability of the ANOVA results.
shift’, ranked second in terms of the contributions, but are still The results from one-way ANOVA and Tukey's method are shown in
rarely seen in real life practice. This might be due to the require- Table 7.
ment of technology changes as well as other barriers mentioned From Table 7, column ‘N’ is the number of observations for each
earlier. However, the industry agreement in terms of their contri- factor level, and the fourth and fifth columns show mean and
butions opens a competitive opportunity for practitioners who are standard deviation of the level of GL implementation for each level
able to find a solution for such difficulties. This should also be of a particular factor. ANOVA gives the p-value, for each factor, to
supported by government parties in order to enable the imple- indicate whether the level means are significantly different from
mentation of these activities and to enhance the competitiveness of each other, at the 0.05 significance level. It appears that ‘operating
the country overall. period’ is the only factor that does not significantly affect the level
of GL implementation (its p-value is greater than 0.05), whilst other
factors are found to be significant. The second column uses the
5.2. Factors influencing GL implementation
letters ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ to represent the grouping information ob-
tained from Tukey's method. According to this approach, within
Before analysing the antecedent factors, the relative weights of
each factor, means that do not share a letter are significantly
the seven GL activities must be determined in order to compute the
different.
overall level of GL implementation within each company, according
Company size, first of all, shows up as one of the significant
to equation (1). The ranking orders from the previous section
factors, and it appears that firms with more than 200 employees
(Tables 3 and 4) were used to compute the weights based on the
have a greater level of GL practices than the smaller sized ones. This
ROC method. Activities in the same group received an equal weight
has been supported by the interviewed managers who noted that
based on an average basis. For example, ‘alternative energy’, ‘modal
large companies normally served customers worldwide who
shift’, and ‘vehicle routing’ shared a group of the second, third, and
encouraged suppliers to provide green reports or sustainability
fourth ranked activities. The ROC weights, based on equation (2),
reports. Also, large logistics companies had more bargaining power
for the second, third, and fourth ranked items are 0.23, 0.16, and
to change or adjust their processes without an obvious effect on
0.11, respectively. Therefore, the weights of these three activities
their costs and sales. Moving back to the literature, as explained by
together become 0.167. Table 6 presents the weights of each activity
Henri and Journeault (2008) and Lau (2011), small firms normally
i according to the contributions to the two goals (WCi and WEi ) as
have limited resources which can discourage proactivity in envi-
well as the combined weight (Wi ).
ronmental care. They focus on merely passing environmental reg-
Based on the derived weights, a company that has a greater
ulations as well as reducing operating costs. Large-scale companies,
performance on ‘eco-driving’ tends to receive a higher aggregated
on the other hand, tend to add value to their products and services
score of GL implementation (Ij), as a result of the greater contri-
by considering the global demand for environmental protection.
bution (weight) of such activity to the cost reduction and envi-
Furthermore, since large firms are always in the spotlight while
ronmental protection. This may also imply that this company has a
smaller ones are not, they are likely to put more emphasis on green
clearer image of itself as a GL practitioner. The individual scores (Ij)
activities to respond to public awareness and demonstrate social
of 311 companies were then used to test the significance of the
responsibility.
prospective factors (hypotheses H1 e H9) through one-way
Financial status is also one of the significant factors. That means
ANOVA. Here, the null hypothesis was that, for each factor, all
it is the highly profitable companies who are most likely to devote
level means were the same. If the null hypothesis was rejected,
resources to improving their environmental performance. Lau
Tukey's multiple comparison test was then used to determine
(2011) explains that the use of innovative technology in green
which level means were different. Before conducting ANOVA, three
transportation always incurs high investment costs, and this may
assumptions had to be considered. First of all, the homogeneity of
prevent the implementation of GL practices in small firms since
variances across factor levels was confirmed using Levene's test,
they tend to be highly cost conscious. The interviewed managers
and this was satisfied for all factors (the p-values were all greater
also agreed that companies with low annual profits were likely to
than 0.05). The assumption of independence, secondly, was also
give priority to improving their sales and reducing costs, rather
satisfied by visually checking the plots of ‘residuals versus fitted
than focusing on environmental issues.
values’ and ‘residuals versus the order of the observations’ gener-
In terms of the service area, the number of levels remains only
ated by Minitab software. These were verified for all factors. Lastly,
two, instead of three as stated in Section 3. This is because, from all
the Anderson-Darling test was employed to validate the normality
respondents, there were only six companies providing only inter-
national shipping. To avoid a misleading conclusion from a
Table 6 considerable difference in sample sizes, samples in this group were
Relative weights of the seven GL activities. combined with the ones who carry out both domestic and inter-
national shipping as a new group. From the analysis, ANOVA in-
Activities WCi WEi Wi
dicates a significant difference between the two level means. It
Eco-driving 0.370 0.370 0.370
appears that the group of firms who serve international customers
Alternative energy 0.167 0.167 0.167
Modal shift 0.167 0.167 0.167 carry out GL activities to a much greater extent than firms who
Vehicle routing 0.167 0.167 0.167 provide only local shipping. This reflects the low awareness of
Green packaging 0.043 0.059 0.051 environmental issues among Thai businesses. In addition, as
Green administration 0.043 0.059 0.051 remarked by the managers, environmental regulations and legal
Reverse logistics 0.043 0.020 0.031
enforcement in Thailand were still not very strict when compared
12 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14

Table 7
Results from One-way ANOVA (p-value < 0.05*) and Tukey's multiple comparison test.

Factor levels Grouping N Mean Standard deviation p-value

Operating period (H1)

1-5 years A 50 2.30 0.71 0.292
5-10 years A 107 2.48 0.71
>10 years A 154 2.38 0.74
Company size (H2)
<50 employees B 154 2.23 0.66 0.000*
50-200 employees B 107 2.41 0.70
>200 employees A 50 2.90 0.73
Financial status (H3)
<50 million baht B 144 2.24 0.69 0.000*
50-200 million baht B 116 2.38 0.67
>200 million baht A 51 2.94 0.72
Service areas (H4)
Only domestic shipping B 191 2.29 0.68 0.000*
Domestic and international shipping A 120 2.58 0.77
Pressure from customers (H5)
Low B 124 2.12 0.68 0.000*
Moderate A 102 2.51 0.66
High A 85 2.69 0.72
Procedure-based practices (H6)
Low C 115 2.06 0.66 0.000*
Moderate B 97 2.46 0.60
High A 99 2.75 0.74
Evaluation-based practices (H7)
Low C 126 2.10 0.65 0.000*
Moderate B 98 2.40 0.65
High A 87 2.84 0.69
Partner-based practices (H8)
Low C 126 2.13 0.69 0.000*
Moderate B 111 2.45 0.61
High A 74 2.79 0.75
General environmental management practices (H9)
Low C 129 2.11 0.64 0.000*
Moderate B 116 2.47 0.71
High A 66 2.85 0.65

to other developed countries. This explains why product sellers challenges rather than simply reacting to these. Vastag et al. (1996)
who are serving foreign customers (who have a greater awareness and Azapagic (2003) also mention that for a company to be suc-
of green issues) always collaborate with LSPs to improve supply cessful in an era of green operations, environmental concerns have
chain environmental performance in order to meet export condi- to be incorporated into its business strategies, and this needs to be
tions. The explanation is then linked to the significance of the next committed and driven by the top management. Furthermore, ac-
factor, ‘pressure from customers’. According to the hypothesis H5, cording to Gonzalez-Benito and Gonzalez-Benito (2006a), suc-
the result proves that environmental behaviour of Thai LSPs has cessful implementation of green projects needs strong
been greatly influenced by customer requirements or encourage- endorsement and support from the top management, and re-
ment. This implies that manufacturers or product sellers who are sources need to be allocated adequately and efficiently.
influenced by the global demand for environmental protection will The aspect of evaluation-based practices is also found to be a
also transfer such pressure to their suppliers and logistics opera- significant driver of GL implementation. As explained by some in-
tors. A number of interviewed managers stated that they were also terviewees, regular practices of performance evaluation drove a
regularly audited by some foreign customers in terms of vehicle company to prepare formal documents and reports, and this
performance, maintenance schedules, and air emissions, among eventually led them to plan for performance improvement on a
others. Evidence and reports were regularly requested as well. continuous basis through GL projects. Next, the results of partner-
The rejection of hypotheses H6 to H9 confirms that GL practices based practices indicate that good collaboration among partner-
need intensive support from top management. In terms of the ships, as well as customers and internal staff, provides more
procedure-based practices, firstly, firms who performed more effective ways to initiate green practices. This could be supported
intensively in this aspect exhibited greater levels of GL imple- by a body of research which has claimed that transferability and
mentation. This indicates that the formal establishment of envi- accumulation of knowledge within business chains influence the
ronmental policies, strategies, and standard procedures, as well as a willingness to adopt technological innovations (Lin and Ho, 2008;
particular team or department concerned with environmental re- Grant, 1996). On the other hand, the lack of knowledge represents
sponsibility, are the determinants of GL initiation. This result is in one of the main barriers for the adoption of green projects (Ojo
line with statements from other environmental management et al., 2014). With strong collaboration and good communication,
studies. As found by Ramanathan et al. (2010), for example, envi- the needs, concerns, and interests of all related parties could be
ronmentally proactive companies always integrate green in- understood and recognised, and this is a prerequisite for achieving
novations into their managerial strategies in order to meet the corporate goals and reaching supply chain sustainability (Azapagic,
demands of environmental protection. Similarly, Aragon-Correa 2003; Lai and Wong, 2012; Maas et al., 2014). Employee motivation
(1998) stresses that management in a proactive company always also needs to be built up by training and internal communication
initiate changes in their policies in response to new environmental provided by the top management (Lin and Ho, 2011; He et al., 2017).
 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14 13

One of the interviewed managers pointed out that collaboration in implied from these, the characteristics of LSPs who are likely to be
training and research with universities and vocational training or- successful in GL implementation include the ambition to add value
ganisations also helped them to broaden their knowledge and to their products and services by considering the global demand for
stimulate the adoption of new technologies. In terms of the general environmental care; the strong financial ability to invest in green
management practices, last but not least, the result shows that innovations and professionals; the role of serving customers who
firms implementing ISO14000 series and/or other policies relating have green requirements and concerns, and the strong desire to
to sustainability, both from operations and purchasing perspec- extend their service network out of the country. Finally, they are the
tives, tend to pursue GL practices more effectively than the ones ones whose top management teams have an intensive commitment
who lack consideration of such aspects. As supported by a number to change and are willing to follow the four management con-
of interviewed managers, logistics firms with a sustainability- structs. The significance of ‘company size’ and ‘financial status’,
related strategy generally forced themselves to improve their moreover, implies that the lack of funds and professional expertise
environmental performance. They regularly collected and reported as well as the high initial investment costs are the main barriers for
environmental data to relevant stakeholders. Goals related to so- SMEs to initiate GL activities. Based on the survey respondents,
ciety and the environment were also established. small-size LSPs (employing fewer than 50 employees and reporting
the annual turnover less than 50 million baht) cover around 50% of
6. Conclusions the population. To promote GL practices among Thai LSPs, the
government may put a special focus on the SMEs group by
For this study, a questionnaire-based survey was used to claim providing fiscal incentives and training programs. Furthermore, the
the generalisability of the findings across the industry while in- significance of the partner-based and general management con-
terviews were employed to explain the causal mechanisms of the structs, together with the lack of consideration of activities that
phenomena identified. The findings from this study represent the need external collaboration (e.g., ‘green packaging’ and ‘reverse
perspectives of LSPs in developing countries where business stra- logistics’), encourage Thai practitioners (both shippers and LSPs) to
tegies are generally drawn based upon the cost competition. The regard the importance of partners' involvement and to form envi-
main managerial implications derived from this study are ronmental strategies from different angles that have not been
described below. widely recognised by their competitors. This would prepare them
First of all, the contributions of several GL activities to cost for the conversion from a cost competitive market to value-adding
reduction and environmental protection were discussed, and the competition in the near future.
ranking orders of those activities were explored. The results sup- Because the development of GL in the Thai logistics industry and
port that the simultaneous achievement of the two goals is in many other developing countries is still in its infancy, a better
possible. In general, green activities that greatly contribute to understanding of the antecedent factors is essential for logistics
environmental protection also lead to cost reductions. In summary, practitioners to prepare themselves in order to best initiate green
‘eco-driving’ is praised by most managers from Thai LSPs as it practices. Companies who have been carrying out GL can also in-
mostly contributes to cost savings as well as the image of envi- crease their progress in green innovations by addressing these
ronmental protection. The group of ‘alternative energy’, ‘modal influential factors. This study, finally, provides managerial impli-
shift’, and ‘vehicle routing’ form the second-ranked activities for cations supporting the notion that corporate environmental pro-
both aspects. On the other hand, the benefits of activities mainly grammes could be a source of competitive advantage. It may help in
established and planned by the customers, such as ‘green pack- promoting investment in GL practices and can also help lessen the
aging’ and ‘reverse logistics’, are less likely to be acknowledged by negative impacts of logistics systems on the global environment.
LSPs. These findings can guide logistics practitioners about which Thailand is here used as a representative of Asian developing
GL activities are consistent with the industry recognition and are countries who produce and distribute products to the global
able to respond effectively to their corporate goals. ‘Alternative market.
energy’ and ‘modal shift’ show up as the future opportunities for This study, unfortunately, did not ask the survey respondents to
Thai logistics companies to enhance their competitive advantages specify the types of products or services they were mainly deliv-
(from the fact that the benefits from these two activities are greatly ering. This omission obstructs a deeper analysis concerning the
acknowledged but they have as yet been hardly implemented potential impact of different business characteristics on GL prac-
within the industry). LSPs should be on track towards capturing tices. Other than this, further studies may consider conducting a
more energy-efficient vehicle technologies and analysing the pos- similar survey in other countries, or regions, in order to confirm
sibility of intermodal or multimodal transportation. To promote the whether the answers would differ from or be comparable to those
practicability of such activities, the government should also lend a for Thailand. Furthermore, the scope of this study covers only GL
hand to provide supporting resources and infrastructure, such as activities linked to transportation. Future studies may consider
the expansion of natural gas fuelling stations, electric vehicle other functions of logistics such as port or air freight delivery as
charging stations, and the rail network, as well as implementing well as warehousing services. Moreover, it is possible that the
subsidies and tax reductions. The weights derived from this study contributions of the factors discovered by this study can be influ-
reflect the contribution of each activity, and they can be applied enced by other environmental variables, such as transitions in
further for the sake of GL performance analysis. The weights also legislation and macroeconomics. Further research may employ
imply that, for LSPs who are eager to enhance their green perfor- additional techniques (e.g., structural equation modelling) to
mance and image, ‘eco-driving’ as well as ‘alternative energy’, investigate the effects of such latent variables. Last but not least,
‘modal shift’, and ‘vehicle routing’ seem to be an effective choice since performance measurement is a prerequisite for continuous
based on their industry recognition. improvement, the development of a logical method for GL perfor-
Secondly, this study also aims to investigate key antecedent mance assessment can be taken into consideration in further
factors for the adoption of GL practices within the road freight studies.
transportation industry in Thailand. At the end, five main factors
are found to be significant, including ‘company size’, ‘financial Acknowledgements
status’, ‘service areas’, ‘pressure from customers’, and ‘organisa-
tional support’ (broken down into four management constructs). As This work was supported by the Thailand Research Fund and the
14 P. Sureeyatanapas et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 191 (2018) 1e14

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