The green paradox of on-demand adaptation: how digital delivery amplifies urban carbon and material burdens
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: With the rapid expansion of digital on-demand services, urban residents increasingly rely on platforms as a primary adaptation to extreme heat. However, the resource implications of this shift—specifically the ‘green paradox’ where protective behavior accelerates material and energy consumption—remain poorly quantified. Drawing on transaction-level food-delivery records for 100 Chinese cities (2017–2019, 2023), we show that heat shocks trigger nonlinear surges in delivery demand, concentrated in midday peaks. By integrating these orders with a system-wide accounting of last-mile transport and packaging-related emissions, we quantify how behavioral responses propagate through urban metabolic systems. We find that delivery-related CO 2 emissions rise more than twice as fast as demand volume, reflecting the combined influence of last-mile transport and packaging-related emissions. This elasticity gap widens in digitally dense cities with carbon-intensive grids and inefficient packaging standards. We formalize this imbalance as the Urban Green Paradox: individual heat avoidance is achieved by shifting burdens to material-intensive infrastructures. These results reveal that digital adaptation amplifies urban resource intensity under current regimes. Targeted interventions, including enforcing reusable packaging and fleet electrification, offer pathways to realign digital convenience with sustainable resource management.
Source: Environmental Research Letters
Authors: Fangtao Qin, Yanfei Wang, Bin Fang, Yi Wang
Institution: Chongqing University
Language: English
Subfield: Transportation
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,045
Award: G374841327
OpenAlex ID: W7221582865