The environmental implications of electronic commerce

Abstract

There are accelerating trends for the implementation of electronic commerce (e‐commerce) as an extra marketing channel for selling products globally via the access of the Internet. This is expected to influence the shape of future cities and the conservation of natural resources. This paper critically reviews the current research work to date regarding the environmental implications of e‐commerce. The main observation is that there are difficulties to generalise the results. There is a general agreement that it is highly difficult, if not impossible, to state if the damaging effects of e‐commerce on the environment can weigh over the advantageous effects or the contrary. One proposition in this context is that instead of looking at e‐commerce as “a vehicle driving towards freely satisfying the market needs”, we should look at e‐commerce as “a cart attached to our vehicle towards sustainable development”.