Assessing the environmental impact of B2C e-commerce: a logistics perspective

Environmental sustainability in a B2C (i.e. Business to Consumer) e-commerce scenario is a very debated topic, and its relevance is expected even to increase due to the growth of B2C e-commerce. Several analysts highlight the growth of e-commerce in most developed countries, and the recent Covid-19 emergency has furthered fostered the increase of online sales. In this regard, a major concern is the environmental sustainability of the logistics activities performed to deliver the products ordered online. Several studies discussed the relationship between B2C e-commerce and environmental sustainability. Even if some of these studies claims that e- commerce is more sustainable than traditional retailing, the results strongly depend on the assumptions underlying the specific environmental assessments. This work is aimed at further investigating the topic and it grounds on an overarching research question: What is the environmental impact of B2C e-commerce? The answer to the RQ is driven by two main phases. First, elements affecting the environmental impact of B2C e-commerce were identified and classified. In particular, a set of 25 factors were identified and grouped into drivers related to (i) products/market, (ii) companies (retailers, logistics service providers), (iii) customers or (iv) externalities. The first step allowed then to proceed with the second phase, the quantification of the environmental impact for a set of scenarios which emerged to be significant. The selection of the scenarios explored by the thesis was exactly driven by the significance of the factors identified. In this regard, the peculiarities of two types of product (grocery and consumer electronics), the so highly changing customer attitude to shopping, the newest trend in the reduction of the order cycle time to delivery customer orders and the use of greener transport mode, were considered significant for ad-hoc studies. On the one hand, the development of environmental assessments in specific scenarios brought further knowledge in unexplored fields. On the other hand, this work should provide retailers and logistics providers with information useful to integrate sustainability in their decisions.