Widespread adoption of green vehicles in urban logistics may contribute to the alleviation of problems such as environmental pollution, global warming, and oil dependency. However, the current adoption of green vehicles in the last mile logistics is relatively low despite many actions taken by public authorities to overcome the negative externalities of distributing goods in cities. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review on studies investigating the adoption of green vehicles in urban freight transportation, paying specific attention to e-commerce. To shed light on the adoption of green vehicles in city logistics, the paper conducts a systematic review of the empirical literature on the topic. The 159 articles reviewed were classified into the following: (a) Optimization and scheduling (67 papers); (b) policy (55 papers); (c) sustainability (37 papers). Among the 159 articles, a further selection of 17 papers dealing with e-commerce, i.e., studies that highlight the most relevant aspects related to the integration of green vehicles in e-commerce urban logistics, was performed. Our findings indicate that green vehicles are competitive in urban deliveries characterized by frequent stop-and-go movements and low consolidation levels while incentives are still necessary for their adoption. The use of autonomous vehicles results the most promising and challenging solution for last-mile logistics.

This paper aims at understanding and evaluating the environmental and economic impacts of a crowdshipping platform in urban areas. The investigation refers to the city of Rome and considers an environmental-friendly crowdshipping based on the use of the mass transit network of the city, where customers/crowdshippers pick-up/drop-off goods in automated parcel lockers located either inside the transit stations or in their surroundings. Crowdshippers are passengers that would use the transit network anyhow for other activities (e.g., home-to-work), thus avoiding additional trips. The study requires firstly, estimating the willingness to buy a crowdshipping service like the one proposed here, in order to quantify the potential demand. The estimation is realized adopting an extensive stated preference survey and discrete choice modeling. Then, several scenarios with different features of the service are proposed and evaluated up to 2025 in terms of both externalities (local and global pollutant emissions, noise emissions and accidents reductions) and revenues. The results are useful to understand and quantify the potential of this strategy for last mile B2C deliveries. Moreover, it provides local policy-makers and freight companies with a good knowledge base for the future development of a platform for public transport-based crowdshipping and for estimating the likely impact the system could have both from an economic and environmental point of view.

Surges in e-commerce sales represent a huge challenge for urban freight transport. Parcel lockers constitute a valid solution for addressing the challenges home deliveries imply. In fact, eliminating courier–consumer contact (also relevant for health-related issues, as made evident by the COVID-19 pandemic) and delivering in fewer predefined places might help coping mechanisms for missed deliveries substantially. Furthermore, this option enables consolidated shipping and reduced delivery trip costs. This paper analyses and compares consumer preferences for alternative collection strategies. It investigates home delivery vs. parcel locker use and forecasts their future market shares. This is performed based on both customer socio-economic variables and the attributes characterising these alternative logistic fulfilment strategies. The case study considered tests upon a stated preference survey deployed in the city of Rome. The investigation specifically targeted young people (i.e., population under 30 years) since they represent early adopters. Discrete choice models allow both quantifying the monetary value of parcel lockers attributes (i.e., willingness to pay measures) and estimating the potential demand for this innovative delivery scheme. Results show that distance and accessibility are the main choice determinants. Furthermore, there is an overall high propensity to adopt parcel lockers. This research can support policymakers when implementing such solutions.

E-grocery is becoming more and more popular, involving both pure e-commerce players and physical stores in its development and sales. As a consequence, the last mile delivery model has been heavily modified, with ambiguous final impact on the environment. This paper identifies the key elements germane to e-grocery (demand and supply), discusses e-grocery development and investigates the challenges ahead. In more detail, it presents the results of a stated preference survey on consumers’ channel choices for the grocery market. The survey was carried out in Shanghai (China) in order to investigate different purchase attributes, such as product and delivery service price, product range, lead time, time window and travel time. The paper identifies heterogeneous reactions to alternative service configurations, which allows to estimate market shares for e-grocery, with the in-store option as a reference. Policy implications and operational solutions to improve the sustainability of this renewed last mile delivery model are thus proposed.

The urban freight sector provides an essential service by delivering goods that are required by shops, companies, and households at a specific place and time. However, the growth of e-commerce and the dawn of on-demand logistics (hereinafter ODL) have raised citizens’ expectations of logistics systems, further stressing them and thereby increasing their operational and environmental costs. To the authors’ best knowledge, there are no extensive literature reviews specifically on the topic of ODL and on suggestions for policy prioritisation for tackling its effects. This paper aims at addressing this issue by providing an extensive literature review of ODL and its enablers. This research, after a thorough explanation of the ODL rationale, its trends, and its effects, analyses possible solutions to its inefficiencies, focusing on enablers and barriers. Furthermore, it illustrates and clarifies the role of external factors in influencing ODL. Finally, it proposes a systematic evaluation approach by identifying knowledge gaps and consequently defining the subsequent actions needed, broken down by the individual influencing components, rendering these solutions compatible with the status quo and effective for solving the highlighted issues.

E-grocery is fast growing worldwide and represents a relevant issue for city logistics. Although in almost all countries the percentage of food e-buyers was lower than those purchasing other commodity categories, due to the pandemic, they have increased significantly in the last two years, with consequences that are difficult to fathom and estimate. This phenomenon therefore deserves more attention, especially with respect to its environmental impact, mostly at the urban scale. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) on how e-grocery impacts the environment through the CO₂ emissions generated and the equivalent energy consumption. The methodology used for the review follows a standard approach, with different combinations of keywords used for the search performed in SCOPUS and the Web of Science databases. Emissions and energy consumption assessments were performed for all of the papers considered. The results point to two different findings: some studies consider online grocery as an environmentally friendly channel, while others note that the energy consumption of this emerging channel is higher than alternative ones. This paper contributes by suggesting future research directions to be explored on the relationship between e-grocery and energy use and provides some reflections that are useful not only to e-grocers and logistics operators, but also to policy makers with an interest in developing sustainable urban plans and promoting less environmentally impacting distributions/configurations of grocery delivery systems within city logistics.