Strategic sourcing selection for bike-sharing rebalancing: An evolutionary game approach

Wei Gu, Meng Li, Chen Wang, Jennifer Shang and Lirong Wei

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2021, vol. 156, issue C

Abstract: Bike-sharing systems (BSSs) offer convenient transportation services with environmental and social benefits. However, they also bring operational complexity, with rebalancing bikes being a very challenging one. The importance and difficulty of building the reverse logistics for BSSs are evident from the data obtained from Mobike, one of the largest dockless bike-sharing platforms in China. This paper proposes an evolutionary game theoretic approach to identify the best bike-sharing sourcing strategies, including self-operation, joint venture, and outsourcing. We show that the self-operation mode is an evolutionary stable strategy to rebalance Mobike. However, if bike-sharing firms cannot achieve economies of scale and significantly reduce the variable costs of the self-operation mode, the outsourcing mode will become the optimal choice. From a long-term perspective, the joint venture mode is never an attractive strategy for the bike-sharing firms under study. Our model can select the optimal sourcing strategy to rebalance bikes in BSS to maximize profit when competition and cooperation are jointly considered.

Keywords: Reverse logistics; Evolutionary game theory; Bike-sharing systems; Sourcing strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1366554521002829
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transe:v:156:y:2021:i:c:s1366554521002829

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600244/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600244/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2021.102522

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review is currently edited by W. Talley

More articles in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().