School of Engineering Management, Xuzhou University of Technology, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China.
Department of Industrial Engineering, Universidad de Talca, Curicó, Chile.
PLoS One. 2021 Jul 30;16(7):e0255532. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255532. eCollection 2021.
The environmental footprint of courier, express, and parcel (CEP) logistics is significant and growing, owing to increased e-commerce. Consumer willingness to participate in the green logistics of CEPs, however, has been understudied. This study addresses this knowledge gap by surveying 155 Chinese consumers about their willingness to participate in CEP green logistics. Additionally, this research identifies some technical issues with previous survey research. Three main factors were extracted after the data were tested for reliability and validity using exploratory factor analysis with principal axis factor extraction and confirmatory factor analysis with diagonally weighted least squares. Consumer willingness is positively correlated with economic (8 items), operational (3 items), and social (3 items) factors, with a statistical significance of p < 0.001. Of all the factors, the strongest correlation, 0.67 (95% CI = 0.57, 0.75; p < 0.001; N = 155), exists between economic factors and consumer willingness. The results of a multinomial logistic regression analysis suggest that all consumers are highly unlikely to participate in economic factors, while they are highly likely to positively commit to operational and social factors. Therefore, it is recommended that the government provides monetary incentives to CEP companies to adopt green logistics, such as tax reductions and subsidies, to reduce the costs of green logistics. Meanwhile, the CEP industry could provide some direct and indirect incentives to consumers to re-use, recycle, and share materials, and to spend time learning about express enterprises' green logistics, to increase consumer participation in economic factors.
快递、快运和包裹（CEP）物流的环境足迹是巨大的，并且由于电子商务的增加而不断增长。然而，消费者参与 CEP 绿色物流的意愿尚未得到充分研究。本研究通过调查 155 名中国消费者对参与 CEP 绿色物流的意愿，解决了这一知识空白。此外，本研究还发现了之前调查研究中的一些技术问题。在使用主轴因子抽取的探索性因子分析和对角线加权最小二乘法的验证性因子分析对数据进行可靠性和有效性测试后，提取了三个主要因素。消费者的意愿与经济（8 项）、运营（3 项）和社会（3 项）因素呈正相关，p<0.001 具有统计学意义。在所有因素中，经济因素与消费者意愿之间的相关性最强，为 0.67（95%置信区间为 0.57，0.75；p<0.001；N=155）。多项逻辑回归分析的结果表明，所有消费者都极不可能参与经济因素，而极有可能积极承诺参与运营和社会因素。因此，建议政府向 CEP 公司提供货币激励，以采用绿色物流，例如减税和补贴，以降低绿色物流的成本。同时，CEP 行业可以向消费者提供一些直接和间接的激励措施，以鼓励他们重新使用、回收和共享材料，并花费时间了解快递企业的绿色物流，以增加消费者对经济因素的参与。
