Measuring the Motivators of Home Delivery Decisions

Over the last decade, many shoppers in the U.S. and around the world have quickly become reliant on home-based deliveries of household and retail goods. While growth in e-commerce is easily demonstrated from retail sales records, relevant activity trade-offs and resulting impacts on passenger and freight travel activity remain less well-understood. Some home deliveries are made out of necessity, while others are discretionary. Some deliveries replace in-store shopping, while others are supplementary to in-person shopping activities. This study leverages a novel national survey, the second wave of the Transportation Heartbeat of America Survey, that simultaneously captures: (1) motivations for specific types of online purchases and/or reasons for not purchasing goods online; (2) household delivery frequencies by type (carrier-delivered parcels, crowdsourced packages, prepared food, and groceries); (3) personal travel behaviors; and (4) individual and household characteristics. In this study, the research team will directly investigate the underlying motivators for home delivery, and the barriers to home delivery, that influence Americans' home delivery choices. First, leveraging location-specific survey responses, the team will conduct descriptive and spatial analysis of results to identify relevant trends. Next, the team will apply exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify latent motivation dimensions and latent class analysis (LCA) to identify distinct behavioral segments based on stated delivery motivations. Third, the team will estimate and compare delivery frequency models, including ordered probit models, zero-inflated negative binomial models, hybrid choice models, or integrated choice and latent variable models. By comparing model performance with and without new motivational variables, this study will test whether controlling for stated motivations improves model fitness and reduces inconsistencies observed in prior work.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $191,516.00
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552344815

  69A3552348320

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  University of Texas at Austin

  Austin, TX  United States  78712
• Performing Organizations:

  City College of New York

  Civil Engineering, Steinman T-127
  140th Street and Convent Avenue
  New York, NY  United States  10031
• Principal Investigators:

  Conway, Alison

• Start Date: 20260601
• Expected Completion Date: 20270531
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Choice models; Delivery service; Electronic commerce; Households; Spatial analysis; Surveys; Travel behavior
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 02001767
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Understanding Future of Travel Behavior and Demand
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552344815, 69A3552348320
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Sep 4 2026 3:01PM