A decision analysis on the optimal timing under the uncertain cost of urban logistics

This paper applies the real options approach to sort out the carbon management strategies for an urban logistics corporation to reduce the carbon emission, and measures the potential gain or loss under the green logistics cost concept. Hence, the paper divides different corporation-level investing circumstances into three stages (i.e., no other change stage, carbon offset stage, and internal system upgrade stage), and the proposed model tries to point out the threshold of the stage switching, which can be evaluated by the optimal timing under the uncertain carbon price. It also can obtain the potential benefit from strategy execution which is measured by the determination of the optimal timing and expect the carbon price under the uncertain cost of urban logistics.