Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
203,203 studies31 sourcesUpdated 42 min ago
Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0Environmental Research Letters

The green paradox of on-demand adaptation: how digital delivery amplifies urban carbon and material burdens

  • Fangtao Qin1
  • Yanfei Wang1
  • Bin Fang2
  • Yi Wang2
  1. 1Chongqing Academy of Governance
  2. 2Chongqing University
Open at sourcePDFDOICite

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.

Related

  1. Social vulnerability amplifies global inequality in urban heat risk
    Xuewen Lei, Qingyan Meng, Qikang Zhao +3
    Communications Earth & EnvironmentPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0General earth scienceCrossref
  2. Land-atmosphere feedback amplifies circulation-dominant fire weather risk over eastern Siberia
    Dongping Bai, Haipeng Yu, Kangjie Ma +5
    Communications Earth & EnvironmentPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textClimate scienceCrossref
  3. Warming since the Last Glacial Maximum amplifies Northern Hemisphere drought expansion driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
    Chao Zhang, Anmin Duan, Mingqiang Liang +3
    Communications Earth & EnvironmentPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textClimate scienceCrossref
  4. Climate warming amplifies coastal hypoxia response to extreme river discharge
    Lin Hao, Zhaolin Sun, Ai Sanada +7
    Communications Earth & EnvironmentPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textOceanography & cryosphereCrossref
  5. A Changing North Atlantic Background Amplifies Western European Heatwaves
    Houwen Wang, Fanghe Zhao, Yuhang Wang +4
    EarthArXivPreprintCC BY 4.0Full textAtmospheric science & meteorologyClimate scienceEarthArXiv

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{qin2026green,
  title = {{The green paradox of on-demand adaptation: how digital delivery amplifies urban carbon and material burdens}},
  author = {Fangtao Qin and Yanfei Wang and Bin Fang and Yi Wang},
  journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/aeb399},
  url = {https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb399},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - The green paradox of on-demand adaptation: how digital delivery amplifies urban carbon and material burdens
AU  - Fangtao Qin
AU  - Yanfei Wang
AU  - Bin Fang
AU  - Yi Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/23
JO  - Environmental Research Letters
DO  - 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb399
UR  - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb399
AB  - 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.
SN  - 1748-9326
ER  -