Recognition-Implementation Gap (RIG) Assessment Framework of Environmental Logistics Practices (ELP): A Case among Thai Logistics Service Providers (LSPs)

This study investigates why environmental logistics practices (ELP) that Thai logistics service providers (LSPs) recognize as essential for performance are not uniformly implemented at levels commensurate with their perceived importance and identifies the domain-specific constraints that explain this recognition implementation gap (RIG) in Thailand’s resource-constrained logistics sector. Using a sequential exploratory mixed-method design, the study combines semi-structured interviews with logistics professionals and a structured expert questionnaire from a multi-stakeholder panel comprising LSPs, user firms, and academics. Practices across eight logistics domains were assessed for performance recognition and implementation status, with a stakeholder agreement threshold identifying a subset of high-impact practices. Despite near-universal performance recognition (90–100%), implementation among company-affiliated respondents averaged 83% across the high-impact practices, leaving RIGs that are small for practices under direct organizational control but reach 25–38 percentage points for capital-intensive and coordination-dependent practices. Packaging and transportation exhibited the largest domain-level gaps, driven by cost premiums, capital constraints and supply chain coordination failures, whilst customer pressure emerged as the primary adoption driver yet proved insufficient to overcome financial and capability barriers, particularly among Thai SMEs. The study identifies four interlinked constraints: financial capacity, capability and knowledge gaps, inter-organizational coordination challenges, and weak institutional support as the primary moderators of implementation, producing an empirically grounded barrier typology that, whilst derived from the Thai LSPs context, holds wider relevance for sustainability transitions across comparable emerging-market logistics sectors. The RIG assessment framework developed in this Thai case provides a replicable template for comparative research across other emerging-market and developing economies.