Organization environmental footprint applying a multi-regional input-output analysis: A case study of a wood parquet company in Spain

Fostering the Environmental Performance of Hotels in Pakistan: A Moderated Mediation Approach From the Perspective of Corporate Social Responsibility

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has been a mere victim of climate change in recent years. The country needs emergency measures at every level to mitigate environmental dilapidation. The role of enterprises in the country's environmental efforts is critical. In this regard, the hotel sector is known for its outsized carbon footprint. Knowing this, the current study aims to improve a hotel enterprise's environmental performance (ENP) as an outcome of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The study also considers the mediating role of pro-environmental behavior (PEB) of employees and the moderating role of altruistic values (ALT). A hypothesized model was developed, which was validated by employing the structural equation modeling technique. The empirical results confirmed that CSR, directly and indirectly (through PEB), positively induces the ENP of a hotel enterprise. Whereas the conditional indirect role of ALT was also found significant. The study offers different implications for theory and practice, among which one important takeaway for the hotel sector is to realize the importance of employees to spur ENP of a hotel enterprise through their eco-friendly behavior. At the same time, the current work also advances the theory by highlighting the moderating role of ALT between the indirect relationship of CSR and ENP.

Assessment of Virtual Water Flows in Iran Using a Multi-Regional Input-Output Analysis

The growth of Iran’s agricultural sector in the past few decades has exerted enormous pressure on its aquifers. There is a strong disparity between economic development and natural resource endowments, which threatens water and food security. In this paper, we used a multiregional input–output (MRIO) framework to assess the virtual water flows in Iran. We also estimate the internal and external water footprint of regions compared to their water availability. The results show that the northern part of the country, with no water scarcity, imported virtual water through the trade of goods and services, while severely water-scarce regions were net virtual water exporters. Iran had a net export of 1811 Mm3 per annum. While blue water resources (surface and groundwater) accounted for 92.2% of the national water footprint, 89.1% of total exports were related to the agriculture sector, contributing to only 10.5% of the national income. The results suggest that policy-makers should reconsider the current trade policy regarding food production liberalization in order to make Iran’s limited water resources available for producing industrial goods, which can contribute more to the economy.

Supply versus use designs of environmental extensions in input-output analysis: Conceptual and empirical implications for the case of energy

Input-output analysis is one of the central methodological pillars of industrial ecology. However, the literature that discusses different structures of environmental extensions (EEs), that is, the scope of physical flows and their attribution to sectors in the monetary input-output table (MIOT), remains fragmented. This article investigates the conceptual and empirical implications of applying two different but frequently used designs of EEs, using the case of energy accounting, where one represents energy supply while the other energy use in the economy. We derive both extensions from an official energy supply-use dataset and apply them to the same single-region input-output (SRIO) model of Austria, thereby isolating the effect that stems from the decision for the extension design. We also crosscheck the SRIO results with energy footprints from the global multi-regional input-output (GMRIO) dataset EXIOBASE. Our results show that the ranking of footprints of final demand categories (e.g., household and export) is sensitive to the extension design and that product-level results can vary by several orders of magnitude. The GMRIO-based comparison further reveals that for a few countries the supply-extension result can be twice the size of the use-extension footprint (e.g., Australia and Norway). We propose a graph approach to provide a generalized framework to disclosing the design of EEs. We discuss the conceptual differences between the two extension designs by applying analogies to hybrid life-cycle assessment and conclude that our findings are relevant for monitoring of energy efficiency and emission reduction targets and corporate footprint accounting.

Comparison of city-level carbon footprint evaluation by applying single- and multi-regional input-output tables

City-level carbon footprint has been recognized as a useful measure of anthropogenic impact on climate change associated with citizens' activities within the administrative boundary. Although the promotion of consumer responsibility suggests rethinking urban indirect emissions, the detailed methodology is far from satisfactory for realistic applications. Due to the lack of multi-regional input-output tables for most cities, there is a wide application of single regional input-output tables. However, there still lacks further discussion on if there will be an obvious evaluation bias by applying city-level single-regional tables rather than multi-regional ones. To visualize the table coverage on its application consequence, both single- and multi-regional input-output tables were employed to compare disparities in the carbon footprint accounting in the case of Tokyo, Japan. Our analysis shows that the gap of emissions driven by Tokyo's final demand between single- and multi-regional input-output tables was considerably large. Furthermore, the results of multi-regional table were found to be 8.11 MtC higher for coal-generated emissions, 7.83 MtC for crude oil-generated emissions and 2.90 MtC for natural gas-generated emissions than those of the single-regional table. The largest deviation in emissions accounting was observed in the power, gas and heating supply sector, the construction sector and the private service sector. The gap between these two input-output tables was notable for all three types of fossil fuels (coal, crude oil and natural gas). These indicated that coal-generated emissions have been largely ignored by single-regional input-output table. The study highlighted the difference of carbon footprint accounting between these two types of input-output tables. Our findings are intended to assist policymakers and scholars in pinpointing and reallocating sectors that are likely to yield severely biased evaluation of emissions embodied in trade when a multi-regional table is not available.

Life Cycle Approaches for the Environmental Impact Assessment of Organizations: Defining the State of the Art

Organizations play a key role in reducing anthropogenic pressure on the natural environment. The first step towards improving their sustainability performances is the implementation of methodologies that take into consideration multiple environmental impact categories, as well as the entire value chain. The attention of scholars and practitioners was initially addressed to the analysis of products and processes, yet in a few cases in which they were addressed, the approaches used for organizations had a limited scope and range of use. Only in recent years have they been framed in a life cycle perspective. This article analyzes two recent life cycle-based methodologies that have their focus on the organization, namely Organization Environmental Footprint (OEF) and Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (O-LCA). The goal is to define the state of the art of their methodological and current application developments and consider the relevance that these methodologies can have, both in terms of internal and external commitment (e.g., for the supply chain actors) and of reporting and communication requirements. The research was carried out starting from scientific databases, integrating technical legislation and secondary literature. The results obtained allowed tracing the first evolutionary trends, identifying the main authors and scientific journals and highlighting the relevant issues according to the researchers. A content and bibliometric analysis was performed that included all the contributions published so far. Projects and case studies that practically applied the two methodologies were also identified and analyzed. Finally, the main differences between the two methodologies were highlighted and future developments were hypothesized.

Environmental productivity in the European Union: A global Luenberger-metafrontier approach

This paper studies environmental productivity in the European Union-28 (EU-28) by extending the methodology proposed by Oh (2010) to an additive Luenberger-metafrontier framework. The main advantage of this approach is that it allows the analyst to account for cross-country heterogeneity. Using data on GDP, environmental pressures and inputs, the change in environmental productivity and its determinants between the years 2001 and 2016 is assessed in several scenarios; heterogeneity is accounted for by differentiating between the members of the former European Union-15 (EU-15) and the new members that joined the EU-28 from the 2000s onwards. Our results show an improvement in environmental productivity over the period, fuelled by both local and global innovation effects, with some EU-15 members advancing the global environmental technology. Conversely, efficiency change has almost always been negative, pointing to a worrying failure to catch up to the best environmental technologies. Accordingly, policy measures aimed at boosting the use of green technologies are urgently needed in the EU-28.

Environmental efficiency and equality embodied in China's inter-regional trade

Embodied emissions in trade have been widely studied; however, there is still a lack of studies that explore whether a country is benefitting from its inter-regional trade in terms of pollutant emissions. This study took sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions as an example and employed modified input-output (MIO) model and traditional input-output (IO) model to quantify emissions under no-trade and trade conditions, and further investigated environmental efficiency and equality of inter-regional trade in China in 2010. The results show that inter-regional trade had increased emissions by 28% compared to no-trade emissions, which confirms the environmental inefficiency of inter-regional trade in China. This was largely because regions with better technology and low emission intensities tended to outsource the production of pollution-intensive but low value-added goods to regions with high emission intensities through inter-regional trade. The exchanges of pollution-intensive products in inter-regional trade have led to notable environmental inequities. Eastern regions usually gained the greatest environmental benefits from trade, while central regions (especially Shanxi, Henan, and Hebei) suffered the largest environmental loss induced by trade. Specifically, Guangdong plundered other regions the most (796 G gram (Gg)), while Shanxi was plundered the most by other regions (790 Gg). Polices to differentiate reduction criteria for emission intensity in different regions and adjust trade patterns within China could be recommended in order to achieve trade-related environmental efficiency as well as environmental equality.

The environmental footprint of an organic peri-urban orchard network

Over the past years, the implementation of urban and peri-urban orchards in cities has increased and so has the environmental awareness regarding these systems. This study applied the environmental extended multi-regional input-output analysis to obtain the Environmental Footprint associated with an organic peri-urban orchard network in Spain. The total environmental impacts were calculated for seven organic peri-urban orchards identified as PUO1 to PUO7. PUO1, PUO4 and PUO6 presented the highest environmental impacts due to a higher consumption of (1) fuel, (2) plastics and (3) electricity in comparison to the other orchards. Approximately 70% of the overall impacts were indirect impacts generated in the supply chain. A more in-depth study of climate change impacts in the supply chain of the organic peri-urban orchard network revealed that the major hotspots were the sectors "extraction of crude petroleum" (29%) and "production of electricity by gas and coal" (31%) located in Spain, China and Middle East countries. The Environmental Footprint serves as a useful indicator to provide the environmental performance of an organic peri-urban orchard network and foster greener and more sustainable cities.