IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i24p16881-d1005140.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Crowd Logistics: A Survey of Successful Applications and Implementation Potential in Northern Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Bortolini

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Viale del Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy)

  • Francesca Calabrese

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Viale del Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy)

  • Francesco Gabriele Galizia

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Viale del Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy)

Abstract

Nowadays, last-mile logistics represents the least efficient stage of supply chains, covering up to 28% of the total delivery cost and causing significant environmental emissions. In the last few years, a wide range of collaborative economy business models has emerged across the globe, rapidly changing the way services were traditionally provided and consumed. Crowd logistics (CL) is a new strategy for supporting fast shipping services, entrusting the management of the last-mile delivery to the crowd, i.e., normal people, who agree to deliver goods to customers located along the route they have to travel, using their own transport means, in exchange for a small reward. Most existing studies have focused on evaluating the opportunities and challenges provided by CL through theoretical analysis and literature reviews, while others have proposed models for designing such emerging distribution networks. However, papers analyzing real successful applications of CL worldwide are lacking, despite being in high demand. This study attempted to fill this gap by providing, at first, an overview of real CL applications around the globe to set the stage for future successful implementations. Then, the implementation potential of CL in northern Italy was assessed through a structured questionnaire delivered to a panel of 214 people from the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna (Italy) to map the feasibility of a crowd-based system in this area. The results revealed that about 91% of the interviewees were interested in using this emerging delivery system, while the remaining respondents showed some concern about the protection of their privacy and the safeguarding of the goods during transport. A relevant percentage of the interviewees were available to join the system as occasional drivers (ODs), with a compensation policy preference for a fixed fee per delivery rather than a variable reward based on the extra distance traveled to deliver the goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Bortolini & Francesca Calabrese & Francesco Gabriele Galizia, 2022. "Crowd Logistics: A Survey of Successful Applications and Implementation Potential in Northern Italy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-17, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:24:p:16881-:d:1005140
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/16881/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/16881/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jagienka Rześny-Cieplińska & Agnieszka Szmelter-Jarosz, 2019. "Assessment of the Crowd Logistics Solutions—The Stakeholders’ Analysis Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-26, September.
    2. Raúl Martín-Santamaría & Ana D. López-Sánchez & María Luisa Delgado-Jalón & J. Manuel Colmenar, 2021. "An Efficient Algorithm for Crowd Logistics Optimization," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-19, March.
    3. Mingyu Zhang & Yuhuan Xia & Shuang Li & Wenbing Wu & Shuxiang Wang, 2019. "Crowd Logistics Platform’s Informative Support to Logistics Performance: Scale Development and Empirical Examination," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-19, January.
    4. Ahmad Alharbi & Chantal Cantarelli & Andrew Brint, 2022. "Crowd Models for Last Mile Delivery in an Emerging Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-20, January.
    5. Archetti, Claudia & Savelsbergh, Martin & Speranza, M. Grazia, 2016. "The Vehicle Routing Problem with Occasional Drivers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 254(2), pages 472-480.
    6. Agnieszka Szmelter-Jarosz & Jagienka Rześny-Cieplińska, 2019. "Priorities of Urban Transport System Stakeholders According to Crowd Logistics Solutions in City Areas. A Sustainability Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-19, December.
    7. Lijuan Huang & Guojie Xie & John Blenkinsopp & Raoyi Huang & Hou Bin, 2020. "Crowdsourcing for Sustainable Urban Logistics: Exploring the Factors Influencing Crowd Workers’ Participative Behavior," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-20, April.
    8. Kafle, Nabin & Zou, Bo & Lin, Jane, 2017. "Design and modeling of a crowdsource-enabled system for urban parcel relay and delivery," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 62-82.
    9. Wang, Yuan & Zhang, Dongxiang & Liu, Qing & Shen, Fumin & Lee, Loo Hay, 2016. "Towards enhancing the last-mile delivery: An effective crowd-tasking model with scalable solutions," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 279-293.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aleksandra Stanković & Milan Andrejić & Vukašin Pajić & Milorad Kilibarda & Dragan Djurdjević, 2023. "A Novel Survey-QFD-WASPAS Methodological Approach for Designing Crowd Storage Platforms: A Case Study of Serbia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-32, May.
    2. Pourrahmani, Elham & Jaller, Miguel, 2021. "Crowdshipping in last mile deliveries: Operational challenges and research opportunities," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Bathke, Henrik & Hartmann, Evi, 2021. "Accepting a crowdsourced delivery - A choice-based conjoint analysis," Chapters from the Proceedings of the Hamburg International Conference of Logistics (HICL), in: Jahn, Carlos & Kersten, Wolfgang & Ringle, Christian M. (ed.), Adapting to the Future: Maritime and City Logistics in the Context of Digitalization and Sustainability. Proceedings of the Hamburg International Conf, volume 32, pages 65-95, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute of Business Logistics and General Management.
    4. Ermagun, Alireza & Stathopoulos, Amanda, 2018. "To bid or not to bid: An empirical study of the supply determinants of crowd-shipping," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 468-483.
    5. Punel, Aymeric & Stathopoulos, Amanda, 2017. "Modeling the acceptability of crowdsourced goods deliveries: Role of context and experience effects," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 18-38.
    6. Snežana Tadić & Mladen Krstić & Željko Stević & Miloš Veljović, 2023. "Locating Collection and Delivery Points Using the p -Median Location Problem," Logistics, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-17, February.
    7. Behrend, Moritz & Meisel, Frank & Fagerholt, Kjetil & Andersson, Henrik, 2019. "An exact solution method for the capacitated item-sharing and crowdshipping problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 279(2), pages 589-604.
    8. Marlin Ulmer & Martin Savelsbergh, 2020. "Workforce Scheduling in the Era of Crowdsourced Delivery," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(4), pages 1113-1133, July.
    9. Mourad, Abood & Puchinger, Jakob & Chu, Chengbin, 2019. "A survey of models and algorithms for optimizing shared mobility," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 323-346.
    10. Michele D. Simoni & Edoardo Marcucci & Valerio Gatta & Christian G. Claudel, 2020. "Potential last-mile impacts of crowdshipping services: a simulation-based evaluation," Transportation, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 1933-1954, August.
    11. Behrend, Moritz & Meisel, Frank, 2018. "The integration of item-sharing and crowdshipping: Can collaborative consumption be pushed by delivering through the crowd?," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 227-243.
    12. Boysen, Nils & Emde, Simon & Schwerdfeger, Stefan, 2022. "Crowdshipping by employees of distribution centers: Optimization approaches for matching supply and demand," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 296(2), pages 539-556.
    13. Behrend, Moritz & Meisel, Frank & Fagerholt, Kjetil & Andersson, Henrik, 2021. "A multi-period analysis of the integrated item-sharing and crowdshipping problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 292(2), pages 483-499.
    14. Wang, Li & Xu, Min & Qin, Hu, 2023. "Joint optimization of parcel allocation and crowd routing for crowdsourced last-mile delivery," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 111-135.
    15. Alireza Ermagun & Ali Shamshiripour & Amanda Stathopoulos, 2020. "Performance analysis of crowd-shipping in urban and suburban areas," Transportation, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 1955-1985, August.
    16. Nils Boysen & Stefan Fedtke & Stefan Schwerdfeger, 2021. "Last-mile delivery concepts: a survey from an operational research perspective," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 43(1), pages 1-58, March.
    17. Martin W.P Savelsbergh & Marlin W. Ulmer, 2022. "Challenges and opportunities in crowdsourced delivery planning and operations," 4OR, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 1-21, March.
    18. Marta Viu-Roig & Eduard J. Alvarez-Palau, 2020. "The Impact of E-Commerce-Related Last-Mile Logistics on Cities: A Systematic Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-19, August.
    19. Tapia, Rodrigo J. & Kourounioti, Ioanna & Thoen, Sebastian & de Bok, Michiel & Tavasszy, Lori, 2023. "A disaggregate model of passenger-freight matching in crowdshipping services," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    20. Magdalena Mucowska, 2021. "Trends of Environmentally Sustainable Solutions of Urban Last-Mile Deliveries on the E-Commerce Market—A Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-26, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:24:p:16881-:d:1005140. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.