Love thy neighbor – reducing driving through green slot labels in e-commerce

With the rapid growth of e-commerce and its negative externalities, an emerging literature examines the potential of nudging consumers towards more environmentally friendly delivery options. We contribute by analyzing a quasi-natural experiment of green labeling, investigating revealed preference data from 35,828 Norwegian customers over five weeks in 2024. A green label marks delivery slots that enable route optimization, thereby minimizing driving and related externalities. We exploit the quasi-random assignment of green labels, and a pricing randomized control trial, to estimate the label effect and the willingness to pay for green delivery using a multinomial logit model. Results show that the probability of choosing a slot more than doubles when labeled as green. Moreover, we find a willingness to pay of €1 for green delivery, ultimately suggesting that consumers value green services and that green labeling is an effective tool for online retailers to minimize delivery costs.