Take it to the streets: Spatial and sociodemographic determinants of e-commerce demand in the Netherlands

E-commerce has transformed freight systems by shifting goods distribution from a limited number of retail locations to millions of individual households. This shift poses challenges for transport policy and practice, because demand for goods is increasingly generated in residential areas not designed for high levels of delivery activity. At the same time, existing research offers no clear consensus on how sociodemographic and spatial characteristics shape e-commerce demand, limiting the ability of transport and land-use planners to anticipate where delivery activity is most likely to arise. Using unique fine-grained e-commerce order data from the Netherlands, combined with fine-grained sociodemographic and spatial characteristics, this study examines how e-commerce demand varies across space. We model non-linear relationships and examine whether these relationships differ across five levels of urbanisation. The results show that demand is highest in areas with larger shares of middle-aged and middle-educated residents and rises with income at a diminishing rate. Demand is also lower in more urbanised areas and highest in rural areas. Beyond urbanisation, demand is higher where many stores are located nearby, but lower where residents have many retail options across the wider surrounding area. By showing that several relationships are non-linear and depend on the spatial scale at which retail access is measured, the results help reconcile mixed evidence and provide a basis for anticipating where freight activity is likely to concentrate. The findings support more targeted transport and land-use planning.