Market dynamics and environmental impacts of e-commerce: A case study on book retailing

E-commerce has been developed by the high integration of transportation infrastructures and information and communication technology (ICT) in complex urban systems. The dynamics of the e-commerce market can cause different environmental impacts. This paper explores the dynamics of e-commerce market and the associated environmental impacts from a psychological perspective using an agent-based model simulation. A conceptual meta-theory from psychology is adopted to form the behavioural rules of the artificial consumers choosing different methods of buying a book, including conventional bookstores, e-commerce, and a proposed self pick-up logistic system. The introduction of the self pick-up system can be successful according to the simulation results. The advantage of lower price will attract a group of consumers. The simulation results also show that different structures of the social network have significant impacts on the dynamics of this market. The environmental impacts in terms of energy consumption and emission generation will be reduced by the introduction of the proposed self pick-up system.