Distance Decay in Online Deliveries and the Sustainability Impact of Pricing Incentives

Abstract

The rapid expansion of last-mile delivery has reshaped urban logistics, yet how delivery flows vary with distance remains poorly understood. Using approximately 48 million delivery records from multiple platforms across 12 cities on four continents, we provide the first large-scale, multi-city empirical estimation of flow-distance relationships in last-mile delivery. Semi-parametric spline and Gaussian process regression models reveal a universal exponential decay of express delivery flows with distance, while scheduled parcel deliveries exhibit near-uniform distance distributions. We further show that delivery fee discounts increase average ordering distances by 14%, with lower-income customers responding most strongly. These findings demonstrate that the spatial and environmental externalities of urban delivery are behaviorally responsive to pricing strategies, with significant implications for sustainable urban logistics policy.