Environmental sustainability in the service industry of transportation and logistics service providers: Systematic literature review and research directions

•The paper provides a systematic review on environmental sustainability among LSP.•The literature review spans the years 1960-2014.•Starting from 415 articles 46 papers were selected and analysed in detail.•The content analysis of the papers highlights six main gaps in the literature.•The paper identifies eight research questions and consequent research directions.

This paper provides a systematic review on the subject of environmental sustainability in the service industry of logistics service providers (LSPs) to analyse the advances of the literature on the topic and pick out appropriate research questions to investigate. The literature review has been performed using two academic databases and spans the years 1960-2014. The paper shows that despite the increasing number of papers on the subject, several areas of research are still being neglected. In particular, the paper highlights six main literature gaps concerning the classification of green initiatives, the impact of green initiatives on LSP performance, the evaluation of sustainability performance, the factors influencing the adoption of environmental sustainability initiatives, the customer perspective in the sustainable supply chain, and the information and communication technologies supporting green initiatives. Starting from these six gaps, eight research questions have been identified. These research questions represent possible emerging areas of investigation on the topic.