Leveraging fairness to nudge consumers towards more sustainable last mile delivery options

• Consumers can be encouraged to choose more sustainable delivery options. • Extra surcharges work best to get consumers to choose greener delivery. • Messages about the environment help a little, but not as much as surcharges. • Consumers feel better about extra surcharges when they think they’re fair. Logistic providers sometimes nudge consumers to participate in the delivery process and stimulate them to choose more sustainable delivery options to reduce the environmental impacts of last-mile delivery. Nevertheless, online retailers are wary of such interventions, fearing that this will reduce consumer satisfaction and jeopardize their competitive position vis-à-vis other online retailers and brick-and-mortar shops. Based on fairness theory, we developed and tested interventions to nudge consumers towards more sustainable delivery options while maintaining consumer satisfaction. A vignette-based experiment following a 2 (surcharge) × 3 (message) design was used to test the impact of surcharges in combination with a message grounded in fairness theory. Using logistic regression, we found that surcharges were the most effective in increasing the probability that the (free) more sustainable delivery option would be selected. A message focusing on the sustainability implications was also effective, but to a lesser extent. The combination of surcharges and messaging was found to decrease this probability. Using causal mediation analysis, perceived fairness was found to mediate the effect of the surcharge on satisfaction. The study findings support the notion that it is possible to design interventions that will stimulate consumers to select more sustainable delivery options without significantly affecting their satisfaction. Interventions based on price (dis)incentives remain the most effective when influencing consumer behavior in the last mile. Their negative effects need to be mitigated through appropriate communication, however.