A study by
researchers in the Delaware Center for Transportation provides insight into
the impacts of
home shopping on vehicle operations and greenhouse gas emissions.
(February 6, 2015) Home
shopping isn’t new — images from Sears catalogues in the early 1900s show
bicycles, banjos, hats, dresses, shoes, long underwear for men, corsets for
women, guns, tools, light fixtures, storage trunks, curling irons, metal toys,
and even cars and entire house kits.
Shopping malls took a chunk out of home shopping in the
mid-20th century, but the Internet brought it back in startling numbers, with
close to half of the American population having made online purchases by 2008.
With a few clicks of the mouse or swipes of the screen,
people can now order everything from concert tickets, books and craft supplies
to home decor, car parts, disposable diapers and groceries.
Logic suggests that online shopping is “greener” than traditional
shopping. After all, when people shop from home, they are not jumping into
their cars, one by one, to travel to the mall or the big box store.
But a multi-year regional study at the University of
Delaware suggests that home shopping has a greater impact on the transportation
sector than the public might suspect. The results of the research are
documented in a paper, “Impacts of Home Shopping on Vehicle Operations and
Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” in the International Journal of Sustainable
Development and World Ecology.
Delaware Center
for Transportation researchers
Arde Faghri (left) and Mingxin Li.
The study, which focused on the city of Newark, Delaware,
was led by Arde Faghri, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering and director of the Delaware Center for Transportation (DCT).
The project included data collection through a survey to
identify shopping behavior and summary of the survey results by product
category, followed by simulation and analysis.
“Our simulation results showed that home shopping puts an
additional burden on the local transportation network, as identified through
four measures of effectiveness — travel time, delay, average speed, and
greenhouse gas emissions,” says co-author Mingxin Li, a researcher at DCT.