Eco-innovation diffusion in retailers’ last-mile delivery: an Agent-Based Model approach
Additional information
Authors
Valentini O.,
Baruffini M.,
Maggi E.,
Vallino E.
Type
Working paper
Year
2025
Language
English
Abstract
The transportation field represents cities’ major air pollution source, causing around 20% of the total GHG emissions at the European level. Among others, road transport contributes to the highest share of overall transport emissions. In this framework, cities are starting to introduce zones with low and zero-emissions, restricting access for Internal Combustion Engine vehicles. We decided to investigate the so-called last-mile delivery and its transition to more sustainable means of freight transport in cities. With this aim, we performed an analysis of the variation of the simulated local emissions, varying different transport system parameters, to evaluate the possible outcome of different green policies. We used an Agent-Based Model network representation, and we simulated the diffusion of eco-innovation among a retailers network, based on the real-world data obtained from the LTZ of the Turin city centre. Our research shows how combined policies, such as incentives for load efficiency and increasing penetration of ecological vehicles, produce the greatest emission reductions, with the model indicating that increasing the loading rate (load efficiency) has a stronger impact on reducing kg/km emissions than pricing policies alone. The success in the for diffusion of transport innovation is highly impacted by network topology, nodes’ distribution, and the threshold for adoption. Innovation adoption reaches up to 90% in Small World networks with a 15% threshold, regardless of ecologic node centrality; drops to ~70% at 30% threshold, and falls below 60% at 45%, where only Free Scale and Erdős–Rényi topologies with central ecologic nodes maintain viability, highlighting a steep decline in robustness as adoption thresholds rise.
Diffusion
License
Rights reserved
Visibility
Public
