Does e-shopping impact household travel? Evidence from the 2017 U.S. NHTS

How does e-shopping impact household travel? To answer this question, which is particularly relevant for policymakers concerned with congestion, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, the authors analyzed data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey using propensity score matching. This allowed us to tackle the bias from households self-selecting into various levels of e-shopping and gain causal inference. Unlike other related papers in the literature, our unit of analysis is a household because travel and shopping decisions within a household are interrelated. They classified households into three groups based on how many orders per person per month they placed online: low (up to one), medium (more than once but less than four), and high (over four). They found that more e-shopping results in more household travel (number of trips, miles, and VMT), but this effect depends on e-shopping frequency and population density, and it affects weekdays more than weekends. E-shopping impacts household travel more for medium frequency e-shoppers in low density areas: compared to similar low frequency e-shoppers, on weekdays, they take on average 8 more monthly trips and travel ∼104 extra miles (including 31 miles for shopping). At the other end of the spectrum, high frequency e-shoppers in dense areas do not travel more on weekends than similar low e-shopping frequency households. To help reduce e-shopping induced travel, policymakers could encourage the creation of neighborhood depots where households would pick-up and return unwanted orders, and foster the development of virtual reality tools for shopping from home.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.103827
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096669232400036X
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/09666923
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Xu, Lu
  • Saphores, Jean-Daniel
• Publication Date: 2024-2

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 103827
• Serial:
  • Journal of Transport Geography
  • Volume: 115
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0966-6923
  • Serial URL: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Demographics; Electronic commerce; Households; Mode choice; Shopping trips; Socioeconomic factors; Travel behavior
• Identifier Terms: National Household Travel Survey
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Passenger Transportation; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01912731
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 21 2024 11:04AM