A Strategic Approach for Promoting Sustainable Crowdshipping in Last-Mile Deliveries

Abstract

Extending last-mile delivery services to individuals—crowdshippers who pick up or deliver a shipment as part of their daily activities—has sustainable benefits, but also risks (damaged parcels, late deliveries, increased emissions) for various stakeholders. So far, developed crowdshipping models have only addressed one or two risks at a time. No model promotes environmental goals separately or together with other goals. This study proposes a crowdshipping model that consists of three stakeholders (the owner of a crowdshipping platform, crowdshippers and parcel providers) and with various incentives aims to maximise the profitability of the platform and the compensation of crowdshippers, the quality of delivery, and to minimise environmental externalities. A two-level leader–follower game and the concept of Shapley value, from cooperative flow games at the follower level, are used to define the optimal strategy that provides sustainable delivery with a good balance between costs and profits. The game behaviour was explained on a crowdshipping platform provider (leader) and two coalitions: individual crowdshippers and parcel logistics providers. The aim of the example is to explain the strategy of promoting environmentally friendly parcel delivery. The results show satisfactory economic, social and environmental performance.