Technology foresight for sustainable road freight transportation: Insights from a global real-time Delphi study

Abstract

Organizations increasingly adopt technologies and logistics measures to improve their social sustainability, reduce transportation-related carbon emissions, or even design their supply chains carbon negative. However, the speed at which this adoption is progressing is not fast enough to address the sustainability challenges of the world today. To gain deeper knowledge about the adoption process of sustainability-related measures in road freight transportation, this paper examines barriers currently hindering a broader market penetration and derives expected timeframes when mass adoption of 14 relevant technologies will occur. Furthermore, the technologies' impacts on the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability are discussed providing recommendations, on which technologies the respective stakeholders might focus on in the future. Since we want to examines a long-term technology perspective of the next 25 years, we rely on systematic foresight methodology. More specifically, we collect empirical data by use of a real-time Delphi survey, which particularly suits complex and uncertain environments. Our global panel includes 116 experts from 25 different countries. The assessments are grouped into short-term, midterm, midterm to long-term, and long-term developments. The categories shed light on potential drivers and barriers to the implementation of the surveyed technologies. The findings emphasize the need to systematically select suitable measures and promote those that are expected to deliver short-term sustainability improvements to address current deficits in a timely manner. The article further outlines the crucial role of politics in developing necessary regulative frameworks to drive sustainability in road freight transportation.