Crowd-shipping in Geneva Exploratory and descriptive study of Crowd-shipping

Abstract

Last decades have shown that urban mobility is becoming an issue in a context of growing environmental awareness among the general public. The Courier Express and Parcel industry represents a significant part of the urban transportation. With the emergence of the sharing economy, crowd-shipping is perceived as a promising alternative allowing to use the current transport capacity more efficiently. The sharing or collaborative economy has attracted growing attention in the literature of the recent years, with only a small proportion discussing crowd-shipping. The purpose of this thesis is firstly to study was has been done in the area of crowdshipping, under the framework of an exploratory study. Then, under the framework of a descriptive study, the authors investigate the concrete situation of Geneva and the relevance of crowd-shipping for the stakeholders of the area. This paper shows the barriers, challenges and benefits linked to the implementation of crowd-shipping. In addition, the authors discuss the most relevant crowd-shipping services for the area of Geneva, with respect to the expectations of different stakeholders.