Assessment On The Environmental Benefits Of Online Shopping

With the popularity of online shopping, consumers’ shopping behavior are also changing obviously. At this point, it is significative to carry out the local research on evaluation of the environmental benefits of online shopping. In this article, carbon emissions is used to measure the environmental benefits of online shopping, compared with traditional offline shopping.First, this article reviews the related research in the field of evaluation of the environmental benefits of online shopping, finding that the online shopping’s impact on the environment result from traffic and consumers’ shopping behavior. The field evaluation and comparison to determine the required coefficient of carbon is the basis of the environmental benefit assessment.The research conclusions in this field are not consistent.Then, compared the online shopping processes with traditional shopping one and analyzed the differences of environmental effects of them finding that the difference is mainly in "the last kilometer" of transportation, packaging and the terminal equipment. On this basis, we put forward the measurement model, combining with the characteristics of regional calculating the coefficient of carbon emissions in the model. Through the questionnaire survey, I collected the data for empirical research and found that one online shopping will produce217.8g carbon in transportation, packaging and the terminal equipment, one traditional offline shopping will produce466.7g carbon. In addition, I compared another shopping modes found that carbon emissions of size:browse online+traditional shopping> traditional shopping> online shopping behavior including "returning the goods">"the first time delivery failure" online shopping>online shopping.In addition, the online shopping is gradually replace traditional shopping.Finally, based on the above analysis in this paper, we put forward some advice on carbon emission reduction about shopping and the future research direction.