Travel Behavior in E-commerce: Shopping, Purchasing, and Receiving

The growth of urban e-commerce has had enormous impacts on urban transportation and land use. Retailers are competing through free and 1-or 2-day delivery which has incentivized small-scale deliveries (small packages in small trucks) to personal residences. From an urban freight perspective, these trips are less efficient than large-scale deliveries to retail locations. However, there remain questions regarding the overall impact of online shopping on passenger travel and vehicle miles traveled (VMT). This project focuses on how delivery preferences affect individual travel behavior in California and the Greater Los Angeles Region. The research puts special emphasis on alternative delivery methods that cluster local deliveries, such as automated parcel lockers (APLs) offered by Amazon. Clustered local deliveries could reduce truck VMT while only marginally increasing passenger VMT. The research team conducted two separate but related surveys to explore the potential of APLs as an alternative for residence deliveries: The first survey examines e-shopping behavior in general; the second addresses the use of APLs. The researchers find that online shopping is ubiquitous. The pandemic increased e-shopping, expanding it to older age cohorts and more diverse products. The use of APLs is rare. Convenience is the dominant factor in the delivery choice. The potential market for APLs could be increased if there were more locations available near home or workplace. Future research directions include modeling the impact of delivery methods on passenger VMT and incorporating product returns into our understanding of APL use.View the NCST Project Webpag