Crowd logistics: an opportunity for more sustainable urban freight transport?

Abstract

Purpose Passenger car occupancy has been falling for years. Partly empty vehicles on our road networks decrease passenger transport sustainability but also contain an opportunity for freight transport. Within Crowd logistics (CL), delivery operations are carried out by using passengers' excess capacity on journeys that are already taking place, resulting in economic, social and environmental benefits. Existing CL initiatives show, however, that there are important differences between concepts in terms of sustainability. The research aims to develop a suitable and comprehensive definition for CL and identify which factors determine the sustainability potential of CL. Methods We systematically analysed a set of 42 papers and interviewed 11 logistics practitioners in order to capture the state of practice. Results Following the literature and interviews, we firstly define CL as 'an information connectivity enabled marketplace concept that matches supply and demand for logistics services with an undefined and external crowd that has free capacity with regards to time and/or space, participates on a voluntary basis and is compensated accordingly'. Secondly, we identify a set of 18 characteristics that can describe the variety of CL concepts. Thirdly, we indicate whether the identified characteristics affect the economy, society and/or environment. The research shows that all characteristics influence economic sustainability while 11 characteristics also affect social and/ or environmental sustainability. Conclusions Our research helps local policy-makers to adapt laws and regulations to the sharing economy developments and provides insight for businesses which CL concept fits their company's corporate social responsibility strategy.

Crowd Logistics Platform’s Informative Support to Logistics Performance: Scale Development and Empirical Examination

“…Based on the OIPT view, a platform's informative support can be treated as a type of information processing mechanism. Particularly, platforms offer customers informative service that helps them issue their logistics service requests to drivers [27]. Platforms then categorize such information according to the characteristics of service requests and construct a multidimensional database.…”

“…First, a contribution of our study is that we construct a theoretical framework for the platform's informative support-logistics performance relationship based on organization information processing theory. By conducting case studies, scholars pointed out that crowd logistics platforms assist drivers in providing customers with faster and more flexible logistics services and help save costs [27,28]. However, few studies could explain how crowd logistics platforms contribute to logistics performance.…”

“…Because of the nascent nature of crowd logistics, scholars normally conduct qualitative, instead of quantitative studies. The literature explores the business model of crowd logistics [5,6,70], the basic functions of crowd logistics platforms [28], and the value outcomes of crowd logistics [27]. However, a few of them have conducted empirical studies to explore the relationship between crowd logistics and logistics performance because of a lack of measures.…”

Approach Methodology for Comprehensive Assessing the Public Passenger Transport Timetable Performances at a Regional Scale

“…Previous research studies [8][9][10][11][12] have confirmed that the quality of transport infrastructure is considered a crucial element which makes decisions about the foreign investment allocation very often. The offered quality of transport network connectivity is considerably related to services provided within transport sector [4].The main task of transport is to satisfy the customers' requirements for quality, flexible, fast, and safe transportation of passengers and cargo [1,3]. Quality is differently perceived from the transport user [12], transport services provider, or transport organizer point of view, but also from the society-wide point of view.…”

“…Customers' needs and expectations are monitored by establishing procedures in accordance with the Regulation (EC) No 1371/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2007 on rail passengers' rights and obligations [14][15][16].Based on the previous research studies [17][18][19][20][21], it can be declared that one of the fundamentals of providing transport services is to offer travel opportunities by designing transport network connectivity among individual transport lines, i.e., assessing the transport connectivity and travel opportunities themselves. Often, after implementing the new timetable in rail transport, particularly the train schedule diagram, discussions are going on about whether it is better or worse than in the previous period, while assessing is approached solely subjectively [3,4,17].The availability of destinations and the frequency of connections are also important criteria for passengers in relation to public transport [3,13]. The key task of transport services is, therefore, to provide ample travel opportunities accordingly, whilst that of the infrastructure is to create the opportunity to provide a comprehensive service within a given state, specific geographical agglomeration, or area of interest [22][23][24].…”