Our recent paper:

Supply, Demand, Operations, and Management of Crowd-shipping Services: A Review and Empirical Evidence

Joint work with Tho V. Le (Purdue University), Amanda Stathopoulos (Northwestern University) and Satish V. Ukkusuri (Purdue University)

is accepted in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.

This paper reviews current practice, academic research, and empirical case studies from three pillars of supply, demand, and operations and management. Drawing on the observed gaps in practice and scientic research, we provide several avenues for promising areas of applications, operations and management, as well as improving behavioral and societal impacts to create and enable a crowd-shipping system that is complex, yet, integrated, dynamic and sustainable.

More Crowd Shipping (CS) research is necessary and we hope our study shapes appropriate research directions and stimulates researchers to conduct research in this emerging field. The growth of the CS industry highly depends on governmental policies. In fact, policymakers are urged to: 1) create policy frameworks and legislations to regulate the CS industry and minimize CS operational uncertainty; 2) identify a clear border between peer-to-peer sharing and business activities so subsidies will be allocated to the appropriate parties; and 3) provide innovation subsidies to fuel the growth of the CS industry. In the same way, CS companies should take the initiative to communicate and collaborate with local governments to overcome their challenges.