This paper investigates the impact of economic growth, energy consumption, tourism, trade openness, and population density on the ecological footprints in Thailand over the period from 1974 to 2016. We applied the augmented Dickey-Fuller and Zivot-Andrews unit root tests to check the stationary properties of the data. The ARDL bounding test approach and VECM Granger causality were used to investigate (i) the long-run and short-run effects and (ii) directions of such effects respectively. The long-run results showed that economic growth, energy consumption, and trade openness have positive relationships with the ecological footprint, while tourism and population density are negatively associated with the ecological footprint in Thailand. The results of VECM Granger causality confirmed that the bidirectional causality (i) between tourism and population density in the long run and (ii) between trade openness and population density in the short run. Furthermore, the unidirectional causality runs from the ecological footprint, economic growth, energy consumption, and trade openness to tourism and population density in the long run. The country policy combined with economic growth, energy consumption, tourism, international trade, and population density perspectives need to be revisited towards sustainable development by mitigating the effects of these variables on environmental depletion especially the ecological footprint. Graphical abstract.
Keywords: ARDL; Ecological footprint; Population density; Tourism; Trade openness.