Crowd-Sourcing a Way to Sustainable Urban Logistics: What Factors Influence Enterprises’ Willingness to Implement Crowd Logistics?

Abstract

The sharing economy has brought new opportunities to the logistics industry, which has created an emerging trend known as crowd logistics. Implementing this mode offers a basis for more sustainable urban logistics, but there is limited research on what leads enterprises to adopt crowd logistics. Based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) theoretical model, this paper developed a model to study the influencing factors of enterprises’ willingness to implement crowd logistics. The data were collected through questionnaire surveys, SPSS and AMOS were used for data analysis. The empirical results showed that the relative advantage, absorptive capacity, market environment, and external motivations have significant positive impact on the company’s willingness to implement crowd logistics, while complexity and resources have no significant impact. Crowd logistics offers an important route to more sustainable urban logistics. Logistics enterprises should take measured steps when implementing crowd logistics, improve their absorptive capacity, and take necessary precautions towards minimizing the risks of crowd logistics.

Keywords

• Crowd logistics
• crowdsourcers
• influencing factors
• TOE model
• stakeholder analysis