Does e-shopping really reduce private car use?

By Dr. Aldo Arranz-López, ZLC Researcher - Ramón y Cajal Fellow.

Leer versión en español

There is a widespread and happy assumption that, although e-shopping may increase the number of vehicles and journeys involved in deliveries, this is compensated or even outweighed by a reduction in consumers’ use of private vehicles to go shopping. With many deliveries made to home addresses, consumers will make fewer shopping trips for in-store retailing, and with less to carry home, may well choose to walk or take public transport. E-shopping is therefore the sustainable option.

However, a review of the literature suggests that this view of the relationship between e-shopping and transport modal choice has not really been tested, and such studies as have been published show a variety of different and contradictory effects. In any case it seems unlikely that the relationship between e-shopping and favoured transport mode would be the same for inner city residents as for consumers in other geographies such as rural areas. If in at least some of these cases the assumption does not hold, then planners and legislators attempting to support more sustainable retail logistics have a problem.

In an attempt to advance our understanding, Andreas Blitz (Goethe University, Frankfurt), Raul Elizondo-Candanedo (Polytechnic University of Madrid), Martin Lanzendorf (LISER, Luxembourg) and Aldo Arranz-Lopez (ZLC, Spain) have been analysing German data to try to answer the question “Is e-shopping behaviour associated with walking to in-store retail instead of using a private car, and does this differ between urban and rural environments?”

The data we analysed came from the 2017 Mobilität in Deutschland national travel survey. This categorised areas as predominantly rural (housing about a third of the population), urban, or the 67 large cities/conurbations. The survey data includes age, gender, household composition, employment status, income, number of cars in the household. It also categorises areas by residential quality, quality of retail opportunity, and quality of public transport. Respondents were also asked whether they prefer to buy their daily goods, and their less regular purchases, on-line, and how frequently they e-shop.

We have applied logistic regression models to estimate the effects of e-shopping frequency, socio-economic attributes, and the built environment, on consumers’ choice of walking as their mode of accessing in-store retail, across each of the three geographical contexts.

For consumers in large cities and conurbations there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between e-shopping frequency and the choice to walk to the shops rather than drive (City dwellers almost by definition live fairly close to the shops, and car-driving can be a nightmare. Almost 60% of city-dwellers shopping trips were on foot). However, in small-town geographies and in rural areas, the results show that those who buy more frequently on-line are actually more likely than infrequent users to use their cars rather than walking to reach in-store destinations (pedestrian shopping trips were 34% and 32% respectively). On the face of it, that contradicts the happy assumption that e-shopping aids sustainability.

Of course, correlation is not causality, and there are many other factors at play. Levels of car ownership (which may be more essential in rural areas) and household income are surely significant. Surprisingly, in urban areas and big cities, people with higher household incomes are more likely to walk. As expected, walking is more prevalent in areas where there is a good local supply of retail opportunities, but the quality of residential areas themselves does not play a key role. The study couldn’t consider transport modes beyond walking and private cars, but it was evident that, at least in rural areas, better public transport provision promotes walking for at least parts of the journey, rather than taking the car for the whole trip (however, fewer than a quarter of rural areas actually enjoy good public transport links). Also worthy of further research would be the impact of shopping preferences, and the extent to which shopping in different categories (clothes, groceries, electronics etc) may have varying effects on transport mode choice. It is also worth noting that the various factors do not necessarily play out in the same way in other countries. Studies bringing in other disciplines, from psychology to marketing, may be relevant to further work.

Also unexplored, but conceivable, is the possibility that shifts in preferred transport mode may lag the adoption of e-shopping as the latter becomes, for each household, a norm rather than an exception. It is also important to recall that shopping is often not the sole, or even primary, purpose of a car journey – retail is often part of the trip to/from work (although the post-Covid ‘working from home’ phenomenon may have implications here), or the school run, or combined with some leisure activity.

More research is needed, but already we see the outlines of future challenges for land use and transport planners if the many good reasons to promote walking (from reducing congestion to improving health through exercise) are to be realised. As e-shopping continues to grow (and the data we have worked with predates the pandemic-related boost in e-shopping) the choice of car over walking, along with the increase in delivery traffic, may become persistent problems. Possible counters include increasing the number and variety of retail options at neighbourhood level in small-town and rural areas (tricky if it is true that e-shopping is eroding margins for smaller-scale retail outlets), creating specific ‘walking retail’ routes, including more attractive public spaces and good walking infrastructure, and better/more appropriate provision of public transport. Development by retailers of ‘in-store experiences’ that cannot be replicated on-line may also contribute.

But the key takeaway from this necessarily limited research is that the interplay between e-shopping and transport mode choice is heavily dependent on geographical and other contexts. Planners should not expect to find a ‘one size fits all’ solution.

For more information click here