Crowdshipping has recently attracted significant attention as a potentially sustainable solution for urban logistics, as it leverages individuals’ underutilized travel capacity to perform last-mile deliveries. While existing research has extensively examined crowdshipper participation through behavioral models, empirical adoption studies, and systematic literature reviews, considerably less attention has been devoted to the governance and policy implications emerging from crowdshipper behavior. This represents a critical gap, particularly in the context of sustainable urban mobility, where logistics innovations are often implicitly assumed to generate positive externalities without adequate regulatory design.
This paper aims to address this gap by translating crowdshipper behavioral evidence into policy-relevant insights for sustainable urban mobility planning. The analysis is based on data collected through a structured questionnaire survey administered to potential and active crowdshippers. The survey captures information on socio-demographic characteristics, mobility habits, motivations, risk perception, trust, and willingness to participate under alternative crowdshipping conditions. While such conditions have previously been used to estimate participation models, this study reinterprets them through a governance-oriented lens in order to explore potential trade-offs between economic incentives, environmental motivations, and mobility-related impacts.
The methodological approach combines descriptive statistics and segmentation techniques to identify distinct crowdshipper profiles and examine their responses to alternative operational settings. The results indicate that higher participation levels are frequently associated with strong economic incentives and high operational flexibility, which may inadvertently encourage additional vehicle kilometers traveled and quasi-professional delivery behavior. In contrast, environmentally motivated crowdshippers appear to be less sensitive to monetary compensation but tend to operate within narrower spatial and temporal constraints. Overall, these findings suggest that crowdshipping is not inherently aligned with sustainable urban mobility objectives and that its impacts depend critically on incentive design and regulatory frameworks.
From a policy perspective, the analysis highlights several governance challenges, including the potential risk of increased congestion, unclear liability and insurance responsibilities, and the lack of formal integration of crowdshipping initiatives within Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs). The paper argues that local authorities should move beyond a laissez-faire approach and actively design regulatory and incentive mechanisms capable of aligning crowdshipping practices with environmental and social sustainability goals.
By shifting the analytical focus from individual participation decisions to governance implications, this study contributes to the literature on sustainable urban logistics and provides actionable insights for policymakers seeking to leverage crowdshipping without undermining broader urban mobility objectives.