An Extended Mental Accounting Model for Green Last Mile Delivery

Sammanfattning: Background. Several technologies are being developed to reduce emissions to make the transportsector greener. Extensive research has been conducted on the supply side of these technologies, but not as much on the demand side. Objectives. The purpose of the study is to analyze end consumers’ preferences for green last mile delivery. Electric roads are used to represent green technologies. The purpose is examined by investigating consumers’ preferences for the last mile delivery attributes delivery fee, delivery speed, delivery point and emission reduction using mental accounting. Methods. A choice-based conjoint analysis is conducted to gather data on 196 Swedish online consumers’ preferences. The choice experiment is conducted in two contexts to examine how these preferences differ between involvement in the product being transported. Data is analyzed with a Hierarchical Bayesian model. Results. The results show that consumers think emission reductions are more important than delivery fee when choosing last mile delivery. Consumers with low purchase frequency have higher preferences for emission reductions than consumers with higher purchase frequency. Also, females prefer higher rates of emission reductions relative to males when choosing last mile delivery for low involvement products, while there are no differences in the high involvement case. Preferences for the green attribute of last mile delivery do not vary between age and income groups, but preferences between these groups differ for other attributes. Conclusions. These findings indicate that consumers use an environmental responsibility account when choosing last mile delivery and that it has high importance relative to a money account but similar importance as the convenience and time accounts. Preferences are different when choosing transport for high and low involvement products and consumers with different characteristics. Implications. Firms offering last mile delivery services could use technologies to make their services greener and gain a competitive advantage since consumers prefer these green options.