An Investigation of Multimodal Transport for Last Mile Delivery in Rural Areas

Xiaofei Kou, Yanqi Zhang, Die Long, Xuanyu Liu and Liangliang Qie
Additional contact information
Xiaofei Kou: School of Management Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Yanqi Zhang: School of Management Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Die Long: Office of Industrial Administration, Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Xuanyu Liu: School of Management Engineering, Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Liangliang Qie: School of Chemistry and Material Science, Hubei Engineering University, Xiaogan 432000, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: High distribution costs constitute one of the major obstacles to the sustainable development of rural logistics. In order to effectively reduce the distribution costs of last mile delivery in rural areas, based on three typical transport modes (local logistics providers, public transport, and crowdsourcing logistics), this study first proposes a multimodal transport design for last mile delivery in rural areas. Then, a cost–benefit model for multimodal transport is proposed which uses genetic algorithms (GA) to solve the logistical problems faced. Finally, Shapley value is used to fairly allocate profits and represent the marginal contribution of each mode in multimodal transport. The numerical results show that multimodal transport can effectively reduce the distribution costs of last mile delivery in rural areas. When the order demand of each node tends to be stable, the marginal contribution of crowdsourcing logistics is often greater than that of the other two distribution modes. The marginal contribution of public transport is highest only when the number of orders per node is very small.

Keywords: rural logistics delivery; multimodal transport; cost–benefit analysis; profit allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1291/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1291/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1291-:d:731977

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().