Examining environmental sustainability in last-mile delivery: a quality function deployment analysis

Purpose Considering the unprecedented growth in last-mile delivery (LMD) of goods in the e-commerce business, the paper aims to analyse its related environmental sustainability concerns. This research seeks to identify, understand and prioritize the barriers to sustainable LMD and recommend countermeasures to minimize the growing adverse impact of last-mile logistics on the environment. Design/methodology/approach The quality function deployment (QFD) approach is applied to convert LMD-related barriers into sustainable LMD design requirements. It extensively utilizes the Delphi approach to capture expert inputs for developing the house of quality (HOQ) framework. Findings The analysis from the HOQ has highlighted that four dominant barriers contribute approximately 70% to the total sustainability issues of LMD. These are high emissions due to fossil-fuelled vehicles, lack of consumer awareness, increasing traffic congestion due to delivery vehicles, and growing expectations from today’s end consumers. Five of the nine countermeasures identified together contribute a significant 72% contribution in mitigating the adverse impact of the growing LMD. Research limitations/implications The QFD and Delphi approaches collect and rank information from 12 experts, which can have a certain degree of bias, subjectivity, time-consuming and costly decision-making, making it more intricate and challenging. The suggested sustainability index does require further research for its validation and real-world implementation. Practical implications The unique application of the HOQ tool of QFD and the Delphi approaches has provided a rich understanding of the dynamics of factors that impact the rapidly growing LMD. The research has also suggested a sustainability tracking index and provided useful insights to researchers, policymakers, e-commerce business leaders and government authorities. Its research has triggered the stakeholders to accelerate sustainable development in LMD. Originality/value The current research develops the HOQ framework using the QFD approach to investigate the dimensions of environmental sustainability in LMD, thereby adding to the literature. The study has provided the priority list for the e-commerce business leaders to focus on. The authors have recommended a simple but effective quantitative sustainability index to e-commerce business leaders to measure and track the progress of countermeasures implemented in the journey towards a sustainable LMD.