Comparison of E-book and Paper Book in Thailand - reading Behavior and Environmental Friendly

抄録

E-book in Thailand is increasing rapidly as the trend is growing along with the increasing of electronic gadget market such as Tablet, Smartphone and Kindle e-paper etc. It has less cost to produce and can be sold in lower price compared to that of paper book. Interestingly, the content can be transferred to other reading device platforms. Moreover, in the viewpoint of an environmental concern, many scientists still believe that the e-book emits the greenhouse gases (GHGs) lower than that of paper book. This research surveyed the environmental awareness and e-book reading behavior of Thai people in order to analyze its carbon footprint on iPad. The result showed that the average reading speed of Thai people was 312 words⁄min, which is slightly slower than reading a printed paper book about 16 words ⁄min. Chi-square test at 95 % significance level represented that the relationship between the selected reading devices and types of media to read was dependent one another. This implies that Thai people still prefer reading magazines on printed paper, while reading the news on electronic device. To calculate the carbon foot print of the printed paper book and its relevant electronic book, by the same number of copies and downloads, the techniques of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was employed. It was found that the electronic book can reduce the amount of CO₂e emission up to 63 %, or about 3 times of that emitted from the printed paper book.