Shopping attitudes and urban freight distribution: the effects of demographic changes

Studies of urban freight mobility traditionally focused only on restocking flows, i.e. vehicle flows from warehouse/distribution centers to trade or service locations (e.g. shops, food-and-drink outlets, service activities). They usually neglected the linkage with shopping activities even if end-consumers’ characteristics and choices in relation to type of retail (e.g. small, medium or large) undoubtedly impact on freight distribution flows. In fact, the characteristics of restocking process are strictly related to the type of commercial activities to be restocked in terms of delivery size, delivery frequency, freight vehicle type and so on. Further, the shopping segment of passenger mobility received few attention respect to systematic components (e.g. home to work trips) and respect to the weight that it has in urban areas. For example, in some French cities, it was estimated that the shopping mobility represents about 69% of urban distances (veh-km) covered each day by motorized vehicles. Besides, shopping mobility has been studied as a component of passenger demand mainly investigating the relationships between travel behavior, the built environment (e.g. land-use profile, commercial activity density) and socio-economic characteristics. Few studies have analyzed it in the perspective of freight distribution. Moreover, although the store shopping remains the predominant way to buy, internet is modifying the end consumer’s behavior. In this case, the commodity can be transported to place of consumption by actors other than the user. For example, in the USA the e-commerce sales represent the 5.5% of Retail Sales, and according to some surveys carried out in Rome, 13 % of interviewees stated they did e-shopping during the survey week. This confirms that the e-shopping is becoming diffuse among youngers and in the future could modify in-depth the purchasers’ behaviors. Therefore, the paper discusses a number of issues related to the transportation impacts of shopping attitudes on urban freight distribution. In particular, the paper focuses on the factors that mainly influence the freight distribution: quantity and choices of type of retail (including e-shop). After an analysis of the state-of-the-art of shopping mobility demand modeling, some models for simulating the choice of retail outlet are presented. The models were obtained using some surveys carried out in Rome, where more than 500 families were interviewed. The models, jointly with urban freight distribution demand models, were used in order to assess the effects of some land-use scenarios relative to the characteristics of inhabitants and the location of commercial activities on the freight restocking. Then, the obtained results are reported and discussed in the full paper.