Toward Most Valuable City Logistics Initiatives: Crowd Logistics Solutions’ Assessment Model

Abstract

Introduction: Crowd logistics is a widely accepted concept in times of the growing popularity of sharing economy solutions. The popularity of e-commerce and a tendency to provide same-day delivery are the main reasons for their development. Developing those trends requires new products and services, now available on the market, known in the transport area as crowd logistics solutions.

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to provide a tool for assessing crowd-logistics solutions, taking into consideration customers’ requirements. The text includes groups of environmental, economic, and social criteria to facilitate the choice of the best crowd logistics solution for freight transport.

Methodology: The research is based on the critical analysis of different sources (literature, European Commission reports, other reports and analyses) and practical solutions in the field of crowd logistics. The main data analysis method is the Analytic Hierarchy Process, usually used to evaluate variants in decision-making processes. This method was chosen because of the variety of data types (quantitative and qualitative) and formats, its popularity, universality, and replicability.

Results: This paper contains ready-to-use weights for the assessment of crowd logistics solutions. The proposed set of criteria and weights can be a useful tool for customers to evaluate the sharing- -economy services landscape in the areas they manage.