Environmental sustainability and consumers’ preferences about delivery options in the context of e-commerce: evidence from a survey

This paper aims at understanding the conditions under which consumers become willing to choose delivery options for the last mile logistics that are more sustainable from the environmental viewpoint. The remarkable increase of the e-commerce and the widespread adoption of omnichannel strategies by “brick and mortar” companies are resulting in a huge diffusion of the home delivery as the best-preferred delivery option by the consumers. Although home delivery can bring about positive effects in terms of service level to the client, it also results in a higher traffic congestion in urban areas, as well as in a relevant increase of CO2 emissions due to the low level of efficiency peculiar to home delivery (Belvedere and Grando, 2017; Brown and Guiffrida, 2014; McKinnon et al., 2012; Edwards and McKinnon, 2010). In this setting the adoption of alternative delivery solutions, namely parcel lockers, could be beneficial from the environmental viewpoint since it would increase the efficiency of the delivery process. On the other hand, such a choice could negatively affect the logistic service perceived by the client. This paper tests the hypothesis according to which if consumers are properly informed about the superior environmental performance of an alternative delivery option (namely parcel lockers), they would be more willing to consider its adoption.