The Impact of Business Digitalization on Energy Efficiency

Abstract

Over the last years, the share of E-commerce has increased in all market segments and the European e-commerce market has become the largest market in the world. In the digital economy, the leading role of e-commerce is to achieve the goals of sustainable development, to ensure flexibility and adaptability of the management system. This study investigates patterns in e-commerce activities and their impact on energy efficiency for a group of 29 European countries by using a unique panel dataset spanning the years 2011–2019 collected from EUROSTAT. The empirical approach involves the specification of a difference one-step GMM estimation method. Our results suggest that e-commerce has the potential to facilitate more sustainable production processes and consumption patterns and ensure more circularity.