A Pigouvian Policy Framework for Urban Logistics: Decision-Maker Alignment and Integrated Pricing-Incentive Design

Urban logistics supports retail, public services, healthcare, construction, and household consumption, but delivery decisions often fail to account for the social costs imposed on congested roads, curbside space, air quality, noise exposure, safety, and public-space use. This study addresses the decision-maker mismatch that arises when the vehicle operator physically generates an externality while receivers, shippers, platforms, building managers, or consumers control delivery timing, shipment fragmentation, service level, fleet choice, and receiving conditions. It develops a Pigouvian policy framework that integrates dynamic road-user charging, curbside pricing, emission-based instruments, off-hour delivery incentives, clean-vehicle support, consolidation incentives, and revenue recycling. The study combines a structured narrative synthesis, decision-maker mapping, an illustrative Korean urban logistics scenario, cost–benefit comparison, and deterministic sensitivity screening. Under the stated scenario assumptions, a carrier-only peak charge reduces monetized daily external costs by only 1.3%, whereas a combined road-and-curbside package reduces them by 12.5%, and an integrated Pigouvian package reduces them by 23.6%. Sensitivity results preserve this ranking. The paper contributes a transferable policy design architecture for internalizing urban logistics externalities while maintaining freight functionality and stakeholder acceptability.