Project number: MF-5.1e

Funding source: Volvo Research and Educational Foundations

Performance period: 1/1/2018 to 12/31/2018

Project description
The purpose of this project is to explore the relationship between household shopping behavior, freight deliveries, and urban form.  We explore shopping behavior as an indirect means for understanding the associated freight deliveries. In previous work we have argued that density, a proxy for urban form, affects the behavior of both households and firms.  Firms economize on space by allocating less space per worker, minimizing storage space, and other strategies.  In the case of retailing, high land values necessitate more revenue per square foot, more rapid turnover of product, and less space devoted to storage, compared to retail activities in lower density environments.  Households also economize on space in response to high land values.  Dwelling units are smaller and inventory capacity is limited.  More shopping trips are taken by walking or public transit, constraining the amount of goods that can be carried home. This suggests that controlling for demographic characteristics, households in high density areas will shop more frequently.  The effect of shopping in smaller lots on freight deliveries is uncertain, because for the retailer the critical trade-off is between inventory holding and revenue generating space.  If shopping is inconvenient, there is more incentive to shop online.  More online shopping would clearly lead to more home deliveries and more freight trips.

Our main hypothesis is that shopping behavior is related to urban density.  More specifically, we expect that: 1) online shopping frequency is positively associated with urban density; 2) in store shopping frequency is positively associated with urban density; and 3) out of home consumption activity is positively associated with urban density.  The effect of these relationships is to increase the per capita rate of freight deliveries, which helps to explain the greater concentration of freight deliveries in central city cores.  We use the 2017 National Household Travel Survey, a national survey that includes a one-day travel diary for every member of the household over the age of 5 years to test these hypotheses.