Perceived Environmental Effort and Sustainable Last-mile Delivery: Examining Their Effects on Green Purchasing Attitudes and Willingness to Pay a Premium

Abstract

Last-mile delivery (LMD) has become a visible sustainability interface through which consumers evaluate firms’ environmental commitment, service value and price justification in logistics-service contexts. This study examines how Perceived Environmental Effort (PPE) influences Last Mile Delivery (LMD) perceptions and how these perceptions shape perceived price fairness (PPF), Attitude Toward Green Purchasing (ATGP) and Willingness to Pay Premium (WTPP). A quantitative explanatory design was employed, and the proposed model was tested using PLS-SEM in SmartPLS with bootstrapping. The findings show that PPE strongly and significantly predicts LMD perceptions (β = 0.820, p < 0.001). LMD also significantly improves ATGP (β = 0.590, p < 0.001) and PPF (β = 0.511, p < 0.001). PPF has a strong positive effect on WTPP (β = 0.828, p = 0.002), whereas ATGP has a negative and non-significant effect on WTPP (β = −0.223, p = 0.396). The model explains substantial variance in LMD (R² = 0.673) and meaningful variance in WTPP (R² = 0.410). These findings indicate that premium willingness in sustainable last-mile delivery is shaped more by perceived price fairness than by favourable green purchasing attitudes. The study highlights the importance of communicating the fairness and value basis of any sustainability-related delivery premium.