D3.1: Assessment framework for zero-emission delivery options

CodeZERO is a three-year Horizon Europe research project aiming to co-create sustainable and zero-emission last-mile delivery and return solutions for e-commerce that align with consumers' preferences while being sustainable for retailers, logistics operators, and local authorities. Additionally, the project is focused on providing clear, consumer-friendly communication and developing tools for local authorities to promote eco-friendly behavior.

Released within WP3 ‘CodeZERO assessment framework’, deliverable D3.1 presents the methodological framework for assessing the impacts of zero-emission delivery options from the perspective of all stakeholders involved in last-mile e-commerce deliveries and returns—i.e., consumers, e-tailers, logistics operators, and local authorities.

Forthcoming deliverable D3.2 ‘Assessment framework for consumers' behavior change’ will provide a set of quantitative and qualitative key performance indicators assessing the effects on consumers of retailer communications about zero-emission delivery and return options.

These two deliverables build in the CodeZERO assessment framework, intended not only to be used for the evaluation and comparison of the performance and effectiveness of last-mile sustainable logistics solutions (including the co-created pilots), but also to enable “shared” decision-making by accounting for the point of view of all stakeholders in the definition of sustainable solutions in WP4.

Building on the definitions developed in D1.1 ‘Delivery options analysis framework’, a delivery option can be described by the combination of different delivery attributes and – as such – can be evaluated from the ‘values’ used to quantify these attributes. Therefore, the development of the assessment framework requires, as a first step, to ‘operationalize’ the attributes. This means specifying the states or levels (i.e., the ‘values’) that each attribute can assume.

To this aim, in D3.1, delivery attributes are reformulated in terms of quantitative key performance indicators (KPIs) to be used for evaluating and comparing delivery options from multiple criteria assessing the sustainability of last-mile solutions in the environmental, social, and economic domains.

The relative importance of indicators and criteria within the assessment framework has been based on a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) involving multiple stakeholders (i.e., consumers, retailers, transport operators, and local authorities) in jointly establishing the relative importance of indicators through an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Results from an online pairwise comparison survey carried out by CodeZERO provide an indication of the relative importance of delivery attributes for the different stakeholders.