Performance and Intrusiveness of Crowdshipping Systems: An Experiment with Commuting Cyclists in The Netherlands
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Department of Transport and Planning, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CN Delft, The Netherlands
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Technology of Future Utopia (TOFU), 3022 BH Rotterdam, The Netherlands
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(17), 7208; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12177208
Received: 17 July 2020
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Revised: 12 August 2020
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Accepted: 28 August 2020
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Published: 3 September 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable City Logistics and Innovation)
Crowdshipping systems are receiving increasing attention in both industry and academia. Different aspects of crowdshipping (summarized as platform, supply, and demand) are investigated in research. To date, the mutual influence of crowdshipping platform design and its supply side (with participating crowdshippers) has not yet been thoroughly investigated. This paper addresses this mutual influence by investigating the relations between shipping performance and intrusiveness to daily trips of commuters who voluntarily act as cycle couriers. In an experiment in The Hague, cyclists were asked to transport small parcels during a simulated daily commuting routine. The grid of commuting trips acted as a relay network to move parcels to their individual destinations. All the movements of the parcels were recorded by GPS trackers. The analysis indicates that a higher degree of complexity of rules in crowdshipping systems can lead to better system performance. Meanwhile, it also imposes higher intrusiveness, as participants need to deviate more from their routines of daily, uninterrupted trips. The case also suggests that a well-designed crowdshipping system can increase system performance without having to ask too much from crowdshippers. This study provides reference to better design such systems, and opens up directions for further research that can be used to provide thorough guidelines for the implementation of crowdshipping platforms.
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Keywords:
city logistics; self-organizing system; crowdsourced logistics; crowdshipping; performance measurement; intrusiveness
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MDPI and ACS Style
Lin, X.; Nishiki, Y.; Tavasszy, L.A. Performance and Intrusiveness of Crowdshipping Systems: An Experiment with Commuting Cyclists in The Netherlands. Sustainability 2020, 12, 7208. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12177208
AMA Style
Lin X, Nishiki Y, Tavasszy LA. Performance and Intrusiveness of Crowdshipping Systems: An Experiment with Commuting Cyclists in The Netherlands. Sustainability. 2020; 12(17):7208. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12177208
Chicago/Turabian StyleLin, Xiao, Yoshinari Nishiki, and Lóránt A. Tavasszy. 2020. "Performance and Intrusiveness of Crowdshipping Systems: An Experiment with Commuting Cyclists in The Netherlands" Sustainability 12, no. 17: 7208. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12177208
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