The ecological consequences of e-commerce have remained largely unnoticed in the euphoria about the economic development potential of e-commerce. Research was still in its infancy, but was developing very dynamically at the time. The recent increase in research projects demonstrates the growing importance of the topic in environmental science.

Against this background, a literature study on the ecological consequences of e-commerce was carried out on behalf of the German Bundestag by the Office of Technology Assessment (TAB). It is part of the second phase of the TAB project "E-Commerce" and supplements the industry studies and literature reports commissioned in parallel on overarching economic concepts and issues relating to e-commerce.

The aim of the literature report was to structure the status of the ongoing international discourse on the ecological implications of e-commerce and to present how it is presented in the current scientific literature. Based on this, research recommendations were made for the further development of the research field and environmental policy conclusions were drawn.