Public Transport-Based Crowdshipping for Sustainable City Logistics: Assessing Economic and Environmental Impacts

Valerio Gatta, Edoardo Marcucci, Marialisa Nigro, Sergio Maria Patella and Simone Serafini
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Valerio Gatta: Department of Political Science, Roma Tre University, Via Gabriello Chiabrera 199, 00145 Rome, Italy
Edoardo Marcucci: Department of Political Science, Roma Tre University, Via Gabriello Chiabrera 199, 00145 Rome, Italy
Marialisa Nigro: Department of Engineering, Roma Tre University, Via Vito Volterra 62, 00146 Rome, Italy
Sergio Maria Patella: Department of Engineering, Roma Tre University, Via Vito Volterra 62, 00146 Rome, Italy
Simone Serafini: Department of Engineering, Roma Tre University, Via Vito Volterra 62, 00146 Rome, Italy

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: This paper aims at understanding and evaluating the environmental and economic impacts of a crowdshipping platform in urban areas. The investigation refers to the city of Rome and considers an environmental-friendly crowdshipping based on the use of the mass transit network of the city, where customers/crowdshippers pick-up/drop-off goods in automated parcel lockers located either inside the transit stations or in their surroundings. Crowdshippers are passengers that would use the transit network anyhow for other activities (e.g., home-to-work), thus avoiding additional trips. The study requires firstly, estimating the willingness to buy a crowdshipping service like the one proposed here, in order to quantify the potential demand. The estimation is realized adopting an extensive stated preference survey and discrete choice modeling. Then, several scenarios with different features of the service are proposed and evaluated up to 2025 in terms of both externalities (local and global pollutant emissions, noise emissions and accidents reductions) and revenues. The results are useful to understand and quantify the potential of this strategy for last mile B2C deliveries. Moreover, it provides local policy-makers and freight companies with a good knowledge base for the future development of a platform for public transport-based crowdshipping and for estimating the likely impact the system could have both from an economic and environmental point of view.

Keywords: crowdshipping; on demand; e-commerce; urban freight; discrete choice model; transport externalities; COPERT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2018:i:1:p:145-:d:193687

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