Profitability Assessment and Profit Sharing of Shinkansen-Based Crowdshipping in Japan

To address the problem of the shortage of delivery drivers in the transportation sectors in Japan, this study explores the potential of the crowdshipping concept through the utilization of Shinkansen trains. This concept allows the passengers of the Shinkansen to transport parcels during their journey in exchange for monetary rewards. This allows the logistics companies to shift some of their long-distance shipments from trucks to high-speed rail, reducing delivery costs and greenhouse gas emissions. We formulate a cooperative game with side payments to evaluate the profitability of the scheme and design fair profit-sharing rules among the logistics company, the railway operator, and participating passengers. We use game-theoretic solution concepts, such as the Shapley value and nucleolus, to accomplish this. Numerical experiments using Sagawa Express and JR Central data suggest that under high passenger participation rates, a substantial portion of parcels on the Tokyo–Osaka corridor could be handled via crowdshipping, maintaining or improving profitability for all stakeholders while reducing CO2 emissions relative to conventional truck-based delivery.