Environmental and social life cycle assessment based on input-output analysis of the Thai financial sector

Abstract

With the growing concern about environmental and social issues, the environmental-extended input-output analysis (EEIOA) has become an important tool for policy decision making and footprint assessments in trade. A major issue to be addressed in the environmental footprint assessment of Thailand is to develop an environmental inventory dataset to cover all industrial sectors at the product level, at a country level, using the IOA method. For the social aspect, the social footprint assessment will help us to understand how products and services relate to negative and positive social impacts. It can provide information on products and services that can become more sustainable from a social point of view. A social inventory dataset needs to be developed, however Thailand does not have a database that covers all economic sectors due to the current life cycle inventory database not covering social aspects. The aim of this study is to develop an environmental and social inventory database for Thailand using an input-output analysis, and to apply it to a case study of the Thai financial sector. This study uses the input-output analysis (IOA) to establish the environmental and social footprint database for Thailand. The scope of the environmental dataset includes the quantity of aspects such as, greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, and N2O), particulate matter and water consumption within a country, covering 180 industrial sectors from the 2015-2020 Thailand input-output table. The social issues considered in this study include employment and accidents in the workplace. To validate the environmental and social dataset, case studies on the Thai financial sector were used. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.