Green Logistics 1

Abstract
Ever-growing globalization and industrialization put forward

impending requirements for green and sustainable logistics (G&SL).
Over the past decades, G&SL initiatives triggered worldwide
deliberations, aiming at easing negative transport externalities and
improving supply chain performance. This review-based paper
attempts to offer a joint quantitative and qualitative understanding for
the overall evolutionary trend, knowledge structure, and literature
gaps of the G&SL research field. Employing the science mapping
approach, a total of 306 major paper published from 1999 to 2019
were retrieved, elaborated on, and synthesized. Visualized statistics
regarding publication years, journal allocation/co-citation, inter-
country/institution collaboration, influential articles, co-occurred
keywords, and time view clusters of research themes were analyzed
bibliographically. On this basis, a total of 50 sub-branches of G&SL
knowledge were classified and thematically discussed based on five
alignments, namely (i) social-environmental-economic research, (ii)
planning, policy and management, (iii) application and practice, (iv)
technology, and (v) operations research. Finally, the current
knowledge obstacles and the future research opportunities were
suggested. The findings contribute to portray a systematic intellectual
prospect for the state quo, hotspots, and academic frontiers of G&SL
research. Moreover, it provides researchers and practitioners with
heuristic thoughts to govern transportation ecology and logistics
service quality.
Keywords: sustainable logistics, freight transportation, green

initiative, transport and environment, supply chain management,
literature review, bibliometric, taxonomy
1. Introduction
Sustainable development has inspired many green and sustainable

logistics (G&SL) activities to reduce the negative effects of freight
transportation [1] and improve positive environmental and social
feedbacks. From long-haul heavy-duty logistics to intra-city
distribution, road-based freight transportation systems generate
tremendous negative externalities in daily operations [2], including
pollutant emissions, congestion, traffic accidents, noise, visual
interference, infrastructure failure and resource waste [3]. Moreover,
these negative externalities, together with the disadvantages of
logistics system itself (e.g., limited intelligentization, personnel
dependence and vulnerability [4]), further lead to the downgrade of
supply chain performance at both enterprise level and regional level.
With the rapid growth of logistics demand, the damage grows
exponentially, which will eventually bring irreversible impacts to the
economy and the whole ecosystem [5].
The operation management of physical distribution is one of the most

significant and challenging sub-issues of the macro supply chain
management (SCM) [6], because it involves real-time scheduling and
coordination of hundreds of thousands of packages and containerized
goods under a dynamic logistics scenario [7]. G&SL is defined as the
planning, control, management, and implementation of logistics
system through the advanced logistics technologies and
environmental management, aiming to reduce pollutant emissions
and improve logistics efficiency [8]. G&SL is not only concerned with
providing customers with green products or services [9], but also with
the green and sustainability of the entire lifecycle of the logistics
process [10]. Various green logistics modes, activities, and behaviors
were proposed and gradually realized from government rules to
technological innovations. For example, the construction of green
logistics network [11,12,13], reverse logistics [14], emission control
[15], electric freight vehicle [16], modal shift and multimodal
transportation [17], energy efficiency [18], collaboration [19,20],
outsourcing [21,22], etc. A wide range of topics related to G&SL
yielded substantial academic results and considerable practical
performance. However, G&SL is still in its infancy and is far from
meeting the challenges posed by the complexity of internal
cooperation and uncertainties of external markets [1].
Previous studies reviewed G&SL from different perspectives. By

reviewing 115 papers, Zhang et al. [10] analyzed the combinatorial
optimization problems and swarm intelligence technique applied in
improving G&SL performance. Qaiser et al. [23] conducted some brief
statistics on the bibliometric information of 40 papers on G&SL. Bask
and Rajahonka [8] mainly reviewed the role of environmental
sustainability in multimodal freight transport decision-making. Based
on 56 papers, Mangiaracina et al. [24] summarized the impact of
business-to-customer transportation process on the environment.
Arvidsson et al. [25] reviewed the sustainable measures for improving
urban distribution efficiency. Pourhejazy and Kwon [26] conducted a
survey on 380 articles published from 2005–2016 and revealed the
application status of operations research technique in the supply
chain optimization. The literature of green SCM was classified and
reviewed by Srivastava [4] from a reverse logistics angle. This work
was further enriched by Fahimnia et al. [27], who investigated the
bibliographical information and trend of a majority of green SCM
research through article co-citation network and keywords co-
occurrence network.
However, based on the time of publication and the number of papers

contained, the existing studies are outdated and incomplete, unable to
provide a comprehensive analysis of the booming G&SL research in
the past two years. Also, it is more difficult to integrate the
multitudinous research directions to build a complete knowledge
structure for G&SL. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical
significance to objectively and quantitatively investigate the overall
progress of G&SL.
This study aims to conduct a comprehensive review of the global

G&SL literature, so as to explore the state-of-the-art, hotspots and
research trend, as well as to build the G&SL knowledge classification
system. Specifically, first, tracking and analyzing the evolution of the
G&SL research field from (i) publication year and journals; (ii)
countries, regions, and organizations; (iii) influential documents; (iv)
keywords clustering and research themes. Second, establishing the
knowledge taxonomy based on the scientometric results. Third,
identifying the research gaps and the future research opportunities.
The novelty of this study lies in two aspects. One is to integrate the
science mapping approach into the systematic literature review
process to visualize the relationships among the G&SL literature.
Science mapping approach is composed of data mining and
bibliographic analysis, which can minimize subjective arbitrariness
and grasp useful information to facilitate in-depth thematic analysis.
Another is that this study further extends the bibliography to
illuminate the emerging knowledge branches, gaps, and agendas in
G&SL research, which will contribute to the improvement of G&SL
practice and research innovation. The findings are expected to provide
researchers and practitioners with a panoramic description and in-
depth understanding of G&SL research. Additionally, the proposed
knowledge structure can also be used as a handbook-like tool to
further collect, analyze, and expand knowledge in the G&SL field and
to provide references for other innovative logistics initiatives.
The rest is organized as follows. In Section 2, the outline of research

method is introduced. Section 3 presents the results of the data
collection and the results of five parts of scientometric
analysis. Section 4 proposes the taxonomy of G&SL research based on
the keywords clustering and discusses the knowledge branches in
detail. The current research gaps and agenda are also
identified. Section 5 summarizes the major findings and limitations.
2. Research Method
2.1. Overview of Review Protocol
This review-based study conducted a systematic investigation on the

academic development of global G&SL research with the aids of
science mapping. Science mapping is a quantitative analysis approach
that uses mathematical statistics and visualization techniques to study
bibliographic networks (e.g., academics, institutions, themes,
keywords, and journals) in a specific field [28]. This approach has
been widely applied in many academic fields, such as sustainable
transportation [29], environment science [30], city logistics [31] and
waste management [32] and can directly synthesize salient findings
from the existing knowledge system.
Figure 1 illustrates the detailed research process, consisting of three

steps.
Open in a separate window
Figure 1
The flowchart of reviewing G&SL literature.
In step 1, the statistics was obtained after a comprehensive retrieval

from two electronic databases, Web of Science (WoS) core and Scopus.
Two rounds of selection were then performed to refine, classify, and
encode the documents. The year publication trend, journal allocation
and the most cited articles were described.
Four scientometric tests were carried out in step 2, namely (i) Journal

co-citation analysis: to identify the most cited journals and the
research domains they belong to. This analysis helps to reveal the
distribution of published journals and cited journals of the reviewed
documents, so as to identify popular journals in G&SL research
domain. (ii) Countries/organizations collaboration analysis: to
visualize the collaborative research network of G&SL among countries
and organizations, so that the readers can quickly understand the
partnerships between major research communities and institutions
around the world. (iii) Document co-citation analysis: to highlight the
influential G&SL articles and the corresponding reference
relationships. By analysis of the papers with high citation, the
emerging trend of scholars’ research interest to G&SL is easier to
grasp. (iv) Keywords co-occurrence analysis: to map out the co-
occurred time zone of the hotspots G&SL keywords and cluster them
into several research themes. Network analysis of co-occurred
keywords is used to clarify the knowledge structure of G&SL as well as
to present the research hotspots and potential research opportunities
in the future.
In step 3, the hierarchical knowledge structure of G&SL was proposed

for thematic discussion.
The text mining software VOSviewer was adopted for science

mapping, combining with another software CiteSpace to portray the
time view of the clustered keywords based on the same data.
VOSviewer, developed by van Eck and Waltman [33], is a
comprehensive bibliometric analysis tool based on Visualization of
Similarities (VOS) technology, which has unique advantages in
clustering fragmented knowledge from different domains according to
their similarity and relatedness. In the visualized networks, a node
signifies a particular bibliographic item, such as organization, country,
keyword or reference, etc. The node size represents the counting of
the evaluated item namely citation or occurrence. Link denotes the co-
citation, co-occurrence or collaboration relationship. The metric, total
link strength (TLS), is outputted automatically by the software to
reflect the correlation degree between any two nodes in the generated
networks. A higher value of TLS, the higher importance and centrality
of the item has [31]. Nodes with a high similarity were clustered
together and distinguished by colors with other clusters, while the
nodes with low similarity should be separated as far as possible. The
similarity matrix can be calculated by Formula (1), where cij is the co-
occurred or co-cited times of item i and item j, Wi and Wj denote the
node sizes of item i and item j respectively [33]. The stopping criterion
of VOSviewer mapping is the minimal sum of weighted Euclidean
distances of all items in each cluster [34], which can be expressed by
Formula (2), where xi and xj are the positions of the nodes.
For a detailed operation manual of bibliographical experiments using
science mapping approach, readers are advised to refer Jin et al. [28]
and Hu et al. [31].
�=[��]=[��⋅��/��]
(1)
�(�,�)=∑�<��‖��−��‖2, ∑�<�‖
��−��‖=1, for ∀�,�
(2)
2.2. Literature Retrieval and Selection
The advanced retrieval function in Scopus and WoS core collection

database was used to retrieve the G&SL related papers published
during 1999 to August 2019 (see Table 1). To ensure the quality of the
literature, the document types were restricted to research articles,
while other types such as the conference proceeding, book chapter,
letter or editorial material were excluded. The preliminary search
yielded 1160 records. These records were imported into EndNote
software for the first-round inspection to filter out duplicates and
unqualified records in forms (e.g., article length and integrity).
Additionally, those completely and partially irrelevant studies were
removed. For example, an article entitled “Using logistics regression to
analyze the sustainable procurement performance of large supply
chain enterprises” was not the desired result. A total of 397 records
were left after the first-round inspection. Then, the second-round
selection was carried out by carefully reading the abstract of each
document. The inclusion and exclusion criteria for this round focused
on whether the document was consistent with the research topic, i.e.,
with green logistics initiatives, practices. and other G&SL innovations,
rather than broader research, such as production, manufacturing or
urban transportation. Unless it has a strong relation with G&SL. In
particular, the following topics were excluded: (i) green design on the
specialized logistics technology e.g., biomass and biofuel; (ii) business
competition and (iii) offshoring and lean production. Finally, 91
records were removed, leaving 306 full-length articles in our review
portfolio.
Table 1
Results of literature retrieval and selection.
Initial
Records:
418
Databases Web of Science Core Scopus
Initial
Records:
742
TI = ((“sustainable” OR “green” OR “sustainability” OR
“environmental” OR “ecofriendly” OR “ecological”) AND
(“logistics” OR (“reverse” AND “logistics”) OR ((“freight” Valid
OR “goods” OR “cargo”) AND (“transport” OR records
Logical
“transportation” OR “delivery” OR “distribution” OR (first-round
statement
“movement” OR “shipment” OR “supply”))) OR (“electric” filter):
AND (“truck” OR (“freight” AND “vehicle”)))) AND 397
Language: (English) AND Type: (Article) AND Time span:
(1999–2019)
(i) green logistics initiatives and practices; (ii) strategy, policy,
Inclusion
environmental evaluation, review and technology; (iii)
criteria
planning and operational research, etc. Final records
(i) non-peer-reviewed journals; (ii) lack of references, (second-
authorships or full text; (iii) less than 5 pages; (iv) Articles do round filter):
Exclusion 306
not relate to G&SL (e.g., generalized supply chain
criteria
management, lean production, market and purchasing, and
public transport)
3. Scientometric Experiments and Analysis

3.1. Chronological Publication Trend
Figure 2 displays the number of papers published annually from

1999–2019 in the portfolio. Obviously, research on G&SL was virtually
stagnant until 2009, and since 2010, it has increased significantly year
by year. By 2018, a staggering 62 articles were searchable. The
vigorous development of academic research indicates the expansion
of the scope and branch of G&SL. Furthermore, from the publication
number and the recent discussed topics of G&SL, it is evident that the
public awareness, market acceptance, social demand and real-world
practice of sustainable logistics measures are undergoing remarkable
ascent.
Figure 2
Year profile of indexed documents.
3.2. Journal Allocation and Co-Citation Analysis
All 306 documents were found in 81 different journals. As shown

in Figure 3, the top 15 journals contributed 155 papers, accounting for
51% of the total. The impact factors of journals were also attached
based on the Journal Citation Reports (2018). Sustainability ranks first
(35, 11.4%), followed by Journal of Cleaner Production (24,
7.8%), Transportation Research Part D: Transport and
Environment (17, 5.6%) and International Journal of Production
Economics (13, 4.2%). Among the top 15 journals, eight are from UK,
four from The Netherlands, two from Switzerland, and one from
Germany. The papers are mainly distributed in the three academic
fields of environment, traffic engineering and operations
management, but they obviously account for a larger proportion in the
environmental science and sustainable field, which is in line with the
connotation of G&SL.
Figure 3
Rank of journals in G&SL publication number.
As shown in Figure 4, among the 12,408 references (corresponding to

2349 different journals), a network of 46 items and 1025 links was
formed by identifying the journals that had been cited more than 50
times. In general, the journals that influenced G&SL research are
concentrated in three interrelated clusters. First is the operations
research (OR), such as European Journal of Operational Research (TLS
= 13,076, citation = 494), International Journal of Production
Research (TLS = 252, citation = 8260), Expert Systems with
Applications (TLS = 4748, citation = 153), Omega (TLS = 5139, citation
= 150) and Computers & Operations Research (TLS = 4234, citation =
137), which can offer quantitative methods for the decision-making
and optimization issues related to G&SL. The second cluster is
transportation research (TR), such as Transportation Research Part
A (TLS = 2057, citation = 103), Part D (TLS = 3883, citation =
176), Part E (TLS = 7576, citation = 260), and Journal of Transport
Geography (TLS = 2089, citation = 91), which accumulates enormous
knowledge towards transportation planning, technology and
operations that can enlighten G&SL research from real-life transport
demand and practice. The third cluster, including Supply Chain
Management (TLS = 6546, citation = 232), International Journal of
Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (TLS = 6357, citation =
235) and Journal of Business Logistics (TLS = 2837, citation = 96), etc.,
reveals that a large amount of G&SL research was conducted based on
the research foundation of logistics and supply chain management
(SCM). Among all the publications, Journal of Cleaner Production (TLS
= 13,799, citation = 555) and International Journal of Production
Economics (TLS = 13,903, citation = 495) are the two most co-cited
journals. They often act as hubs, integrating the results of OR, TR and
SCM with social, environment or economic implications to provide
cross-domain knowledge crucial to the diverse development of G&SL.

Figure 4
Mapping of the journals co-cited.
3.3. Countries/Organizations Collaboration Analysis
Table 2 lists the countries or regions that are actively studying G&SL,
showing six measurements, including number of publications (NP),
TLS, average citation year, total citations, average citation per
country/region, and average normalized citation. The average
normalized citation was calculated by dividing the total number of
citations by the average number of citations published per year
[34]. Figure 5 displays the collaboration network among countries and
regions. The minimum number of documents and citations for a
country was set at 5 and 30 respectively. Finally, a map with 25 items
and 58 links was generated.

Figure 5
Mapping of countries/regions contribute to G&SL research.
Table 2
Summaries of countries/regions active in G&LS research.
Country/ Ave. Total Ave. Ave. Norm.

Territory NP TLS
Region Year Citations Citation Citation
China Mainland Asia 49 36 2017 234 4.78 0.57
North
United States 41 30 2012 1388 33.85 1.28
America
Country/ Ave. Total Ave. Ave. Norm.
Territory NP TLS
Region Year Citations Citation Citation
England Europa 24 28 2014 488 20.33 1.16
Sweden Europa 19 0 2014 300 15.79 0.88
India Asia 16 6 2018 90 5.63 1.07
Spain Europa 16 6 2014 355 22.19 0.86
Italy Europa 15 18 2017 284 18.93 1.68
The Netherlands Europa 13 18 2011 524 40.31 1.33
Germany Europa 13 10 2014 116 8.92 0.71
North
Canada 12 14 2014 285 23.75 0.98
America
France Europa 12 12 2014 203 16.92 0.86
Hong Kong Asia 10 12 2018 394 39.4 1.53
Taiwan Asia 10 8 2017 456 45.6 1.47
Singapore Asia 9 16 2017 214 23.78 1.64
Belgium Europa 8 6 2014 152 19 1.18
Portugal Europa 8 4 2013 112 14 1.09
Greece Europa 8 6 2015 326 46.57 0.92
According to Table 2, G&SL research is widely distributed, especially

in Europe, Asia, and North America, which is a field of worldwide
concern. Mainland China has the most publications, but the United
States has the highest total citation. Other countries/regions such as
Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan present a lower number of
publications; however, they keep significant figures of average
normalized citation which can strongly express their high influence.
Besides, most of the documents contributed by these
countries/regions were published in the last three years, which means
they are playing an increasingly active role in promoting G&SL.
Two evidence can be observed from Figure 5. First, based on a

partnership, the global G&SL research is divided into four
communities. Therein, two communities are leaded by European
counties, such as UK, Spain, The Netherlands, and Italy, while the
other two communities are “Mainland China-Hong Kong-Singapore”
and “United States-India-Australia-Portugal-Taiwan”, dominated by
China and USA, respectively.
Second, the international collaboration is not significant. Taking
mainland China for instance, about 70 percent of 49 publications are
completed entirely by domestic institutions. The Swedish publications
do not have any co-authors from other countries or regions. This
phenomenon may be due to the large differences in the background
and model of G&SL development in different countries [35]. Moreover,
the knowledge gap caused by the wide extension of G&SL and the
scattered knowledge structure make the research still focus on the
respective fields of researchers, such as sustainable development [36],
environment governance [37] and transportation planning [38].
Therefore, at present, the cooperation between academic institutions
of different backgrounds has not been widely carried out.
Among the 402 organizations that contributed to G&SL research,

those with more than five documents and over 30 citations were built
into a network of 22 items and 22 links, as shown in Figure 6. None of
the organizations published more than 10 papers (3% of 306) and the
studies were relatively independent. Therefore, it can be argued that
no organization has yet been able to lead G&SL research so far.
However, some of the institutions located in Asia Pacific and Europe
have a higher reputation in G&SL due to higher citations, including the
Hong Kong Polytechnic university (Hong Kong, 388 citations),
Wageningen University (The Netherlands, 370 citations), Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki (Greece, 324 citations), National Chiao
Tung University (Taiwan, 330 citations), Iowa State University (USA,
206 citations), University California Berkeley (USA, 160 citations) and
Nanyang Technological University (Singapore, 137 citations). In
addition, Figure 6 also shows insufficient collaborative research
across organizations.
Figure 6
Mapping of global collaboration network among organizations.
3.4. Influential Research Highlight
Through the document co-citation test of the portfolio, the most

influential G&SL publications in the past two decades were analyzed
and the co-citation network was constructed. In VOSviewer, the
minimum number of citations was set to 30 to build a co-cited visual
network map of 83 items and 350, as shown in Figure 7. The nodes in
the map denote the documents that were identified by the first author
name and the publication year. The colors of the nodes and the links
represent the time of publication and the time of two documents that
are co-cited, respectively. The co-occurrence of the literature shows
an obvious type of “local concentration and overall dispersion”,
indicating that some G&SL studies were widely recognized and
produced some common ideas and results. Most papers with high
citation appeared around 2010, which was a landmark year for G&SL
research. The co-citation time series indicate that G&SL knowledge
spreads faster and faster.

Figure 7
Mapping of the influential documents and their co-citation relationship.
The top 15 most cited papers are presented in Table 3, showing their
publication year, title, TLS, citation counts and topics. The most cited
study was by Dekker et al. [39], one of the first methodological studies
to link the operations research knowledge (such as design, planning,
and control) to the field of green logistics. The second is Sheu et al.
[40], whose main contribution is to propose a modeling technique for
sustainable logistics operations and management decisions to
maximize supply chain profits. These were followed by papers by Lai
and Wong [41] and Ubeda et al. [42], which focused on using the
scenario-based approaches, such as the questionnaire and case study,
to evaluate the environmental performance of green logistics
practices. The main topics of other highlighted documents involve: (i)
management insights from industrial practices [43,44]; (ii) multi-
criteria evaluation system for green logistics (e.g., policy [45],
environment [46], and transportation planning [47]); (iii) network
facilities design and optimization [48,49]; (iv) reverse logistics
[50,51]; and (v) enterprise responsibility and third-party logistics
[52].
Table 3
List of publications with the highest impact in G&SL.
TL Topic Related
Document Year Title Citation
S to G&SL
Operations research for green
Dekker et al. logistics - An overview of Operations
2012 100 330
[39] aspects, issues, contributions, research
and challenges
An integrated logistics
Sheu et al. Operations
2005 operational model for green 20 260
[40] research
supply chain management
Green logistics management and
Lai and performance: Some empirical Management
2012 82 167
Wong [41] evidence from Chinese practices
manufacturing exporters
Ubeda et al. Green logistics at Eroski: A case Management
2011 52 146
[42] study practices
Sarkis et al. Reverse logistics and social Reverse
2010 104 128
[50] sustainability logistics
Frota Neto Designing and evaluating Operations
2008 22 128
et al. [11] sustainable logistics networks research
Green perspectives and
Murphy and Management
2003 practices: a “comparative 78 118
Poist [34] practices
logistics” study
Determinants of green practice
Lin and Ho Systematic
2011 adoption for logistics companies 48 115
[45] evaluation
in China
Credibility-based fuzzy
Pishvaeee et mathematical programming Operations
2012 24 114
al. [48] model for green logistics design research
under uncertainty
A strategic sustainability
Presley et al. justification methodology for Reverse
2007 46 91
[51] organizational decisions: a logistics
reverse logistics illustration
Murphy and Green logistics strategies: An Management
2000 62 90
Poist [44] analysis of usage patterns practices
TL Topic Related
Document Year Title Citation
S to G&SL
Environmental sustainability in
Lieb and Environmental
2010 the third-party logistics (3PL) 0 87
Lieb [52] impact
industry
Environmental assessment of Environmental
Hovath [46] 2006 12 83
freight transportation in the US impact
A hybrid approach integrating
Awathi et al. Affinity Diagram, AHP and Systematic
2012 18 74
[47] fuzzy TOPSIS for sustainable evaluation
city logistics planning
The design of sustainable
Lee et al. Operations
2010 logistics network under 24 73
[53] research
uncertainty
3.5. Keywords Co-Occurrence Analysis
The keywords co-occurrence analysis was conducted to describe the

internal composition and structure of G&SL and to reveal the frontiers
[31]. The options “All Keywords” and “Full Counting” in VOSviewer
analysis were checked to obtain a holistic intellectual landscape of
G&SL research. Before the scientometric test, the keywords, such as
“third-party logistics providers” versus “3PL”, “transport” versus
“transportation”, which are necessary due to differences in
expression, were manually simplified on the original data file. The
minimum occurrences of each keyword was set to 4, forming a
network of 112 nodes representing keywords (1455 keywords in all
documents) and 2067 links, as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8
Mapping of co-occurred keywords.
Figure 8 displays the mainstream of research keywords in G&SL and

their co-occurrence relationships. Divide these keywords into four
clusters and distinguish them with different colors. Therein, Cluster
#1 contains 18 items focusing on the practice and management of
logistics sustainability (e.g., collaboration, case study and intermodal
transportation), while Cluster #2 covers 25 items, concentrating on
the environmental issues of freight transport, such as carbon
emission, energy consumption and lifecycle assessment. Cluster #3
(34 items) and Cluster #4 (34 items) emphasize on the “model,
planning and optimization” as well as the “supply chain performance,
development strategy and competitiveness”, respectively.
Table 4 shows the detailed information of the significant keywords.
The top 10 most frequently studied and highly connected terms are
sustainability (Feq. = 80, TSL = 547), green supply chain (Feq. = 68,
TSL = 629), management (Feq. = 58, TSL = 411), model (Feq. = 55, TSL
= 394), green logistics (Feq. = 48, TSL = 325), performance (Feq. = 47,
TSL = 367), logistics (Feq. = 46, TSL = 299), framework (Feq. = 43, TSL
= 356), impact (Feq. = 41, TSL = 312) and reverse logistics (Feq. = 39,
TSL = 323). These keywords play a critical role in forming G&SL
research topics and connecting major branches of knowledge.
According to the metric of average citations, the following keywords,
including transportation, environmental sustainability, production,
reverse logistics, and efficiency, aroused a lot of attention.
Table 4
Summaries of significant keywords and theme clusters of G&SL research.
Cluster Ave. Ave. Norm. Time

Keywords Occurrence TLS
ID Citation Citation Span
2007–
Sustainability 80 547 13.9 1.2
2019
2001–
Management 58 411 16.6 0.9
2019
2008–
Impact 41 312 18.4 1.1
2019
2003–
Logistics 46 299 19.1 1.1
2019
2004–
Cluster Systems 37 260 19.3 1.2
2019
#1
2008–
(purple) Case study 14 108 29.6 1.1
2019
Size =
335 2013–
Efficiency 14 108 32.7 1.3
2019
2011–
China 12 88 27.9 0.8
2019
Intermodal 2017–
12 88 5.2 0.6
transportation 2019
2013–
Collaboration 11 73 12.7 0.8
2019
2017–
Stakeholder 10 71 8.2 1.2
2019
1999–
Freight transportation 38 223 15.3 1.1
2019
2007–
Carbon emission 31 197 13.8 1.1
2019
2010–
City logistics 29 118 12.7 1.1
2019
2005–
Cluster Policies 14 94 24.5 1.1
2019
#2
2008–
(green) Costs 13 92 11.7 0.7
2019
Size =
169 2009–
Energy consumption 13 72 8.7 0.7
2019
2015–
Electric vehicles 11 74 16 1.4
2019
2017–
Lifecycle assessment 10 68 22.2 1.6
2019
2017–
Modal shift 10 54 6.6 0.8
2019
2004–
Model 55 394 24.2 1.2
2019
2004–
Reverse logistics 39 323 35.7 1.4
2019
Transportation 2015–
17 125 6.1 1.4
planning 2019
2009–
Decision-making 16 132 19.5 1.6
2019
Cluster 2012–
#3 Optimization 16 122 24.9 1.1
2019
(red)
Size = 2011–
Closed-loop logistics 12 118 14 1.2
202 2019
2011–
Network design 12 94 27.1 0.9
2019
2005–
Production 12 75 37.5 0.7
2019
2008–
Transportation 12 106 52.1 1.8
2019
Vehicle routing 2023–
11 74 31.1 1.5
problem 2019
Cluster Green supply chain 68 629 23.4 1.1 2005–
#4 2019
2008–
Green logistics 48 325 21.9 0.9
2019
2011–
Performance 47 367 17.7 0.9
2019
2007–
Framework 43 356 18.9 1.1
2019
2009–
Industry 29 260 20.4 1.1
2019
Third-party logistics 2013–
27 206 11.5 1.5
service providers (3pl) 2019
Environmental 2003–
26 189 42 1.5
sustainability 2019
Sustainable 2010–
(blue) 26 191 15.6 1.1
development 2019
Size =
422 2009–
Environment 24 21 15.7 0.7
2019
2004–
Strategy 20 139 23.1 1.3
2019
2011–
Operations 17 137 12.6 0.8
2019
2015–
Urban 13 65 8.1 1.2
2019
Environmental 2012–
12 93 27.5 1.3
performance 2019
2011–
Competitive advantage 11 88 30.5 1.3
2019
2013–
Social responsibility 11 106 26.3 1.6
2019
Keyword co-occurrence network is a static expression of a particular

area that does not take into account changes over time in the manner
that the terms are used [54]. Figure 9 shows a time zone view of
keywords that occur more than eight from 1999 to 2019. Each term is
arranged in chronological order to present the trend and interaction
of keywords. Studies on management, model and green supply chains
had been published extensively before 2005 and had been going for a
long time, showing that these early topics are still the hotspots of
current research. In contrast, articles related to collaboration,
transportation planning, modal shift and stakeholder were published
from 2015 to 2017, which are emerging themes discussed frequently
in recent years and may become the hotspots of future research.
Additionally, a large proportion of the keywords were proposed
between 2007 and 2015, indicating that G&SL research was greatly
enriched during this period. Table 4 presents the time span of all
highlighted keywords.

Figure 9
A time zone view of clustered research themes: 1999-2019.
4. Discussion
4.1. Knowledge Taxonomy of Current Research
Through the aforementioned analysis, the research progress,

evolutionary trend, and hot-discussed topics of global G&SL are
clarified. However, the generic scientometric results cannot accurately
reflect the explicit division of the multifarious knowledge of a domain
[31]. Based on the clustering analysis of high-frequency keywords, a
comprehensive taxonomy of G&SL knowledge from 1999 to 2019 was
further proposed, and each separated branch was thematically
discussed in-depth subsequently. Topics with similar attributes were
integrated into different categories of themes and manually renamed
to make the taxonomy more compact and easy to understand. Figure
10 demonstrates the mind mapping of G&SL research themes, where a
total of 5 alignments and 50 sub-branches are assembled. The number
of representative articles of each theme was also attached.

Figure 10
The knowledge taxonomy of G&SL themes.
4.1.1. Evaluation on the Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts of

G&SL Initiatives
Nearly a quarter of the literature (71 out of 306 papers) focused on

evaluating and quantifying how the potential green logistics initiatives
improve the “triple bottom line” (i.e., social, environmental and
economic performance, SEE) of existing freight activities. The subjects
of these studies were basically originated from four aspects: carbon
emission, energy consumption, social sustainability, and external cost-
and-benefit. Mattila and Antikainen [15] provided a backcasting
method for the long-term prediction of greenhouse gas emissions and
fossil fuel consumption in long-distance freight transport, considering
the sustainable goals and policies developed by the EU governments.
Similar research was conducted for assessing the U.S. scenario [46]. A
questionnaire survey conducted by Makan and Heyns [55] found that
the pressures from consumer, brand protection, top management, and
cost-saving and revenue are the major drivers for freight
organizations to implement the sustainable initiatives. Khan et al. [56]
modeled the impact of G&SL performance on the countries’ economic
development and macro-level social and environmental indicators.
Papoutsis et al. [57] and Solomon et al. [58] both maintained that
logistics sustainability is closely related to operational efficiency and
social acceptance from an economic and environmental perspective.
Through the expert scoring, Morana and Gonzalez-Feliu [59] identified
the most prominent factors affecting the sustainability of urban
logistics are monetary saving, services quality, and customers’
satisfaction rate (economic), pollution emissions and congestions
(environmental), and the number of employment created/destroyed
(social). Social and environmental activities play a more important
role in promoting sustainable logistics than financial-economic
activities [60]. Rashidi and Cullinane [61] found that the national
logistics industry with high SEE index has the following features: (i)
well-planned logistics network infrastructure; (ii) high quality of
service operators; (iii) shipments tracing technology; and (iv) efficient
timetable scheduling.
Another part of emphasis was given to SEE performance of G&SL

based on logistics operations and business. Guo and Ma [62] evaluated
the energy consumption and emission level under different logistics
business modes, concluding that the third-party logistics provider and
the joint distribution modes have obvious environmental advantages
in developing green urban distribution. Wang et al. [63] found that
green logistics performance would impose positive effects to the
exporting countries in the international trade. Herold and Lee [64]
investigated the carbon reports disclosed by some giant international
logistics enterprises, e.g., UPS, FedX and DHL, and compared their
sustainability-related strategies, namely legitimacy-seeking
arguments versus energy and emission reduction. In addition, a
variety of qualitative analysis measures, such as fuzzy multi-criteria
evaluation modeling [65], data envelopment analysis [66], and
analytic hierarchy processes [67] were also widely applied to
illuminate the logic between SEE performance and G&SL.
Except for the three-dimensional evaluation system, some scholars

also analyzed the critical success factors and barriers for G&SL
initiative implementation from the SEE perspectives. For instance,
Arslan and Sar [68] found that the managers’ intention towards green
logistics initiatives is generally determined by the environmental
attitude, perceived behavior control and subjective norm. Besides,
government subsidizes [69] and internalization of externalities
[70,71] were considered to be the effective models to reduce negative
external cost in the logistics industry, thus promoting the greening
process of the logistics market.
4.1.2. Planning, Policy and Management Research of G&SL
This knowledge branch focuses on two basic G&SL topics, (i) the
planning, development, and policymaking from industrial level, and
(ii) the collaboration strategy and management from project level. For
the former, Lindholm and Blinge [2] indicated that the public support,
stakeholder partnership, and excellent management skills are the
most significant factors to achieve sustainable development of the
logistics industry. The coordination among metropolitan economy,
logistics infrastructure investment, and industrial chain upgrading is
the essential foundation of G&SL [36]. Integrating freight activities
into the general planning procedure or transport planning is also
considered important for the implementation of G&SL. Shankar et al.
[72] quantified the dynamic uncertainties and intrinsic sustainability
risks of freight transport and stated that most of the risks were
socially induced rather than financially driven. The risks of
multimodal green logistics were analyzed by Kengpol and Tuammee
[73]. A system dynamics simulation conducted by Sudarto et al. [74]
revealed that the economic performance of G&SL is directly affected
by freight policy, while environmental performance is indirectly
affected. Klumpp [75] proposed two strategies to develop green
logistics, namely encouraging public investment and imposing heavy
taxes on carbon raw materials.
For the latter, the collaboration and game among logistics service
providers (LSP), government, shippers, and enterprises are paid more
attention. Commonly, a positive cooperation strategy of stakeholders
will significantly improve the operational performance of G&SL [76]
and even the entire supply chain [19]. Therein, the benefits brought by
the collaboration between suppliers and customers [77] and LSPs-
shippers [78] are particularly salient. The government plays a
dominant role in the knowledge dissemination [79] and economic
incentive of greenization [20], leading to the innovation of logistics
technology. Moreover, the shippers’ willingness to pay for G&SL
products [80], the exploitation of green logistics knowledge [81], as
well as the gaps between green logistics demand and supply [82] also
aroused research attention.
Furthermore, several novel business and operational modes of

logistics aiming at improving the sustainability in transportation
process were proposed, e.g., freight consolidation [83], smart logistics
[22], and low emissions zones [84]. The most hotly debated topics are
outsourcing and crowd shipping (CS). CS, proposed for the last-mile
delivery problem, is a concept that means the parcels and passengers
are co-transported along a passenger trip [85]. According to
Ameknassi et al. [86], freight transportation, warehousing, and
reverse logistics are the three major outsourced logistics activities.
The outsourcing strategy has proven to be advantageous in reducing
energy use, global warming, and supply chain risk, compared with
common logistics operations [87].
4.1.3. Real-World Application Areas and Practices
Over the past decade, research on the G&SL practices were carried out
over a broad range, including SCM, reverse logistics (RL), e-commerce,
urban distribution, multimodal transport, and other dedicated
logistics such as food [88] and manufacturing [89]. Much valuable
experience and instructions can be obtained from real-world
applications. For example, the unsustainability of the supply chain is
largely due to the poor logistics practices in the downstream [90],
which specifically refers to transport operation delay [91], poor
communication [91] and the lack of effective management of carbon
footprint [92]. A sustainable SCM is an effective measure to improve
the competitiveness, financial and environmental performance of
logistics enterprises. However, this is not absolute, Hazen et al. [93]
believe that some green SCM practices might not necessarily lead to
competitive advantage, but make users feel that they are getting low-
quality products.
Reverse logistics is convincingly one of the most efficient solutions to

reduce environmental pollution and waste of resources by capturing
and recovering the values of the used products [94]. Legislation, social
image, corporate citizenship, and market competence force
enterprises to integrate RL into their supply chains [95]. In real-world
application, improving RL sustainability and greening process is the
primary goal to optimize the overall supply chain performance. Our
review found that most green-related RL studies focused on the
network design [96] and system planning [14]. Other topics are waste
recycling management [97], benefits assessment [98], reverse
operations outsourcing [99] and social responsibility [50].
The unsustainability of urban logistics makes it the most urgent goal

of greening. Huge logistics demand, such as rapid business-to-
business and business-to-customer logistics activities, make freight
transportation in big cities face the dilemma of air pollution, poor
accessibility, and livability [31]. The practice of integrating green
logistics planning into smart cities construction has been carried out
for a long time, especially in Europe, mainly including last-mile
delivery [100], traffic management [101] and lean logistics [102].
Compared with G&SL in urban domain, the sustainability issues

regarding inter-city or regional logistics are more emphasized on the
intermodal application. The shift of road-based modal to other
transportation system, such as rail and water has the potentials of
ensuring environmental sustainability, flexibility, and cost reduction
[17]. However, despite the encouragement by the government, the
practice of intermodal transport is still in a preliminary stage due to
the difficulties of infrastructure investment [103].
4.1.4. Emerging Technologies Proposed for G&SL Development
Developing advanced facilities and technologies is a sustainable and

forward-looking solution to meet the challenge of freight transport.
Many emerging logistics systems were proposed in recent years. Such
as urban consolidation center [104], electric road system [105],
intelligent transportation system [106] and packaging benchmarking
system [107], etc. Meanwhile, some soft applied techniques, such as
big data [108], internet of things [109] and cloud computing platform
[110], have also been applied to logistics operations to support the
sustainable development of the emerging systems.
Electric vehicles (EVs) technology, which has been widely applied in

passenger transport, is also waving a revolution in the field of G&SL.
Current research on freight EVs mostly focuses on energy efficiency
[111], fleet optimization [16] and environmental benefits [112].
Simulation results from various cities show that EVs achieve
extremely high benefits in carbon emission reduction, with over 80%
relief rate tested by Giordano et al. [112].
For reducing the negative externalities such as traffic congestion and

disturbance, another interesting concept, i.e., transferring the ground
logistics process to underground space, namely the Underground
Logistics System (ULS), has aroused increasing attention. ULS refers to
using a group of hierarchical underground nodes, pipelines, and
tunnels to distribute cargo flows in and between cities with 24-h
automated operations [113]. ULS can be designed as a network form
connecting urban logistics parks and last-mile delivery, or a dedicated
underground container line established between seaports and urban
gateways, leading to huge environmental and social benefits (e.g.,
energy-saving, accidents and congestion mitigation and improving
urban logistics capacity, etc.) [114]. So far, the technological feasibility
of several ULS projects was acknowledged, yet the large-scale
implementation has not started due to the relatively high construction
cost and low public awareness [5]. For this reason, the collaborative
strategy of retrofitting existing urban rail transit systems, such as
trams, light rail or subways, to achieve mixed passenger-and-freight
transport has received higher recognition and was successfully
stepped into engineering practice in some European cities [115].
Compared with ULS, the collaborative modes are easier to implement,
since the dual use of transportation infrastructures would moderate
the system cost to an acceptable level [49,116].
4.1.5. Operations Research and Optimization Methods for G&SL

Decision-Making
The operations research (OR) of G&SL issues that are originated from
real-world applications is always being a well-concerned topic
because it is directly related to the quality of some critical decision-
making in logistics operation. The OR method applied for G&SL is
defined as a better of science to identify the trade-offs between
environmental aspects and costs, so that the corresponding decisions
such as location, transportation, warehousing, and inventory can be
optimized and the limited resources can be reasonably assigned [39].
Dekker et al. [39] classified the application of OR in green logistics as
follows: logistics services network design [48], facility location [117],
vehicle routing problem [118], inventory management [40] lifecycle
production optimization [119], supply chain planning, control, and
procurement [120,121] and model choice [122]. A variety of OR
techniques, such as heuristic algorithms [121], stochastic
programming [53], and robust optimization [123], were developed for
the above issues. In addition to the objectives of general logistics
planning e.g., cost and efficiency, the G&SL version focus more on the
minimization of environmental influence, e.g., carbon emission and
energy consumption. Currently, OR is increasingly applied to optimize
the G&SLs’ decision-making in a complex scenario set, such as demand
uncertainty [48] and facilities failure [124].
4.2. Research Gaps and Agenda
Through the above scientometric analysis and thematic discussion,

the comprehensive research trend, mainstream academic topics, and
knowledge taxonomy of G&SL domain were revealed. Although
researchers and practitioners achieved substantial results in
promoting G&SL theory and practice, there are still some
shortcomings that need to be elaborated in future studies.
4.2.1. Limitations of Global Collaboration and General Evaluation
Framework
In terms of research model, international cooperation is still lacking.

The broad applicability of most G&SL knowledge based on local cases
deserves further discussion, such as planning methods and evaluation
systems. European countries made great efforts in rebuilding the
integration of green logistics. However, the lack of international
cooperation and universal solutions hinders the dissemination and
deepening of knowledge, and the current achievements are far from
enough to promote the globalization of G&SL, which is reflected in the
imbalance of global G&SL practice.
To fill this gap, although it is recognized that logistics policy has a

strong regional character, cross-institutional and cross-national
collaborative research on market operation, industrial metrics,
technology innovation and macro development strategies should be
strengthened under the trend of supply chain globalization. For
example, more attention can be paid to the horizontal comparison of
green logistics mode, scheme and performance under different case
backgrounds. Additionally, more empirical studies are needed to be
carried out in some developing countries in Asia and elsewhere in the
world, considering they are the fast growing economies with higher
population and logistics demand.
4.2.2. Complement Research from a Global/Holistic Perspective
Although the knowledge branch of research is flourishing, it is

acknowledged that there is still a need to supplement the overall or
holistic research to improve the knowledge system of G&SL. Research
on sustainability and green has always been complex and multi-
variable, interactive, with far-reaching implications. Besides,
sustainability and green are public and social issues. Current
theoretical applications are limited to the analysis of local or one-way
relationships, such as LSP/retailer/carrier responses to green policies,
planning and performance evaluation of green and sustainable
initiatives.
The operation and decision-making of G&SL involve many
stakeholders, such as local authorities, manufactures, LSP, carriers,
customers, and even the sharers of transportation resources. The
impact of G&SL should also be long-term and dynamic. Thus, the
whole picture includes multiple perspectives, such as the dynamic
evaluation of the whole life-cycle of green logistics practice, the
decision interaction among multiple stakeholders, and the follow-up
research and report on a new green technology or practice.
4.2.3. Lack of Effective Platform to Accelerate the Research of

Innovation Technology
Without green innovation technologies, the effect of implementing

G&SL from a management perspective alone is minimal. However, it
takes a lot of time for some innovative technologies that can
fundamentally improve the negative effects of logistics to move from
laboratory to application. Applications such as the EV took decades to
implement [125]. Although the technology is constantly updated and
improved, more management lag. Another competent concept, the
ULS, ASCE has published a feasible technical system as early as 1998
[126], but only in a few countries has it been publicly piloted in recent
years.
The introduction of a new thing does require a long period of

demonstration, such as the reliability of the technology, the
acceptability of the market and the ambiguity of the real benefits.
However, the problem is often the gap and lag in the research of
application management in the transition from technical problems to
market application and practice management. Therefore, building
effective platforms based on multidisciplinary, cross-organizational
collaboration to accelerate the research and application of innovative
technologies is particularly important for G&SL practices, such as ULS,
RL, and CS. Such calls are all the more urgent in their own research.
5. Conclusions
The concept of green and sustainable logistics has received increasing

attention and consideration government sectors, scholars,
practitioners, and international organizations. A large amount of
practical achievement was made at both the industrial and theoretical
levels. This study reviewed 306 valuable contributions regarding
G&LS over the past two decades through a three-step review program.
They were described in year publication, journal allocation and
citation counts. Then, the bibliographic networks of countries,
organizations, journal and document co-citations, keyword co-
occurrence and timezone clusters of research themes were visualized
to help understand the overall research status and academic progress
worldwide. Grounded in the scientometric analysis, an integrated
knowledge taxonomy of the G&SL field was presented, including five
major alignments and 50 sub-branches.
Results indicate that the chronological publication of G&SL shows a

trend of rapid increase. The quantity of literature published in 2018 is
fifteen times more than that of 10 years ago. Sustainability, Journal of
Cleaner Production, Transportation Research Part D: Transport
Environment and International Journal of Production Economy are the
top four journals, which contributed over a quarter of all G&SL papers
since 1999. The maps of journal allocation and co-cited journals show
that the current research is most relevant to the environmental
science and transportation science. In terms of countries, China, the
United States, the UK, Sweden, and India are the major territories of
G&SL research. The network across co-authored organizations and
countries revealed that the collaboration among different research
communities is not strong. Hence an active and robust global
collaboration atmosphere has not formed yet.
The map of co-occurred keywords showed that the most frequently

discussed G&SL themes in each cluster were sustainability and
management (cluster #1), freight transportation and carbon emission
(cluster #2), model and reverse logistics (cluster #3), and green
supply chain and green logistics (cluster #4). The timezone view of
keywords showed that articles related to collaboration, transportation
planning, modal shift and stakeholder were largely published during
the recent years. On this basis, the knowledge taxonomy of G&SL was
manually synthesized from five aspects: (i) evaluation on SEE impacts
of G&SL initiatives; (ii) planning, policy, and management research;
(iii) real-world application areas and practices; (iv) emerging
technologies and (v) operations research and optimization methods
for G&SL decision-making.
Finally, the potential roadmap for filling current research gaps was
recommended, which were divided into three streams: (i) more global
research collaboration should be advocated to jointly develop and
supplement the comprehensive evaluation framework of G&SL
performance; (ii) future research efforts could focus on the interactive
and dynamic relationships among sustainable development goals,
green policies and the decision-making of multiple stakeholders; (iii)
the application-oriented platforms and management research for
some most advanced green logistics initiatives would be highly
beneficial in promoting G&SL innovation.
However, it should be noted that the data used in this study was
confined to those research articles and review articles that were
published in the peer-reviewed journals, and they were retrieved only
from the two mainstream databases considering the applicability of
software. Although the indexed documents could represent most of
the convictive viewpoints of G&SL research, some valuable articles
that were published in other forms or included in other databases
might be overlooked inevitably. To sum up, this review has great room
for improvement in terms of material selection. A systematic
investigation incorporating valuable conference proceedings, reports,
and books in the field of green logistics or green supply chain is
expected to portray a more comprehensive knowledge map for future
research. Additionally, the in-depth review of the hotspot themes in
G&SL domain e.g., OR application and SCM, may also contribute to
multidisciplinary integration and interaction.
Acknowledgments
The editors and anonymous reviewers of this paper are acknowledged
for their constructive comments and suggestions.
Author Contributions
R.R. and W.H. proposed the research framework, analyzed the data
and wrote the article; B.S. and Y.C. contributed to data collection; J.D.
and Z.C. contributed to revising article. All authors have read and
agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation

of China (Grants no. 71631007, no. 71601095 and no. 51478463), and
the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu
Province (Grant no. SJCX19_0230).
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this

work.
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Abstract

Ever-growing globalization and industrialization put forward

Keywords: sustainable logistics, freight transportation, green

Sustainable development has inspired many green and sustainable

The operation management of physical distribution is one of the most

Previous studies reviewed G&SL from different perspectives. By

However, based on the time of publication and the number of papers

This study aims to conduct a comprehensive review of the global

The rest is organized as follows. In Section 2, the outline of research

This review-based study conducted a systematic investigation on the

Figure 1 illustrates the detailed research process, consisting of three

In step 1, the statistics was obtained after a comprehensive retrieval

Four scientometric tests were carried out in step 2, namely (i) Journal

In step 3, the hierarchical knowledge structure of G&SL was proposed

The text mining software VOSviewer was adopted for science

2.2. Literature Retrieval and Selection

The advanced retrieval function in Scopus and WoS core collection

3. Scientometric Experiments and Analysis

Figure 2 displays the number of papers published annually from

3.2. Journal Allocation and Co-Citation Analysis

All 306 documents were found in 81 different journals. As shown

As shown in Figure 4, among the 12,408 references (corresponding to

Open in a separate window

3.3. Countries/Organizations Collaboration Analysis

Open in a separate window

Country/ Ave. Total Ave. Ave. Norm.

According to Table 2, G&SL research is widely distributed, especially

Two evidence can be observed from Figure 5. First, based on a

Among the 402 organizations that contributed to G&SL research,

3.4. Influential Research Highlight

Through the document co-citation test of the portfolio, the most

Open in a separate window

3.5. Keywords Co-Occurrence Analysis

The keywords co-occurrence analysis was conducted to describe the

Figure 8 displays the mainstream of research keywords in G&SL and

Cluster Ave. Ave. Norm. Time

Keyword co-occurrence network is a static expression of a particular

Open in a separate window

Through the aforementioned analysis, the research progress,

Open in a separate window

4.1.1. Evaluation on the Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts of

Nearly a quarter of the literature (71 out of 306 papers) focused on

Another part of emphasis was given to SEE performance of G&SL

Except for the three-dimensional evaluation system, some scholars

4.1.2. Planning, Policy and Management Research of G&SL

Furthermore, several novel business and operational modes of

4.1.3. Real-World Application Areas and Practices

Reverse logistics is convincingly one of the most efficient solutions to

The unsustainability of urban logistics makes it the most urgent goal

Compared with G&SL in urban domain, the sustainability issues

Developing advanced facilities and technologies is a sustainable and

Electric vehicles (EVs) technology, which has been widely applied in

For reducing the negative externalities such as traffic congestion and

4.1.5. Operations Research and Optimization Methods for G&SL

4.2. Research Gaps and Agenda

Through the above scientometric analysis and thematic discussion,

In terms of research model, international cooperation is still lacking.

To fill this gap, although it is recognized that logistics policy has a

4.2.2. Complement Research from a Global/Holistic Perspective