Evolutionary game analysis of three parties in logistics platforms and freight transportation companies’ behavioral strategies for horizontal collaboration considering vehicle capacity utilization

The low-capacity utilization of vehicles and empty mileage leads to a high freight transportation cost [1]. Inefficient transportation has a negative impact on the environment and society, which has attracted increasing attention, and many scholars have studied ways to improve vehicle capacity utilization [2]. The level of empty running and the capacity utilization of freight vehicles have hardly changed. EU statistics show that in most member states, empty vehicle running ranges between 15% and 30%, and capacity utilization by weight ranges from 54% to 57% over a 5-year period (Eurostat, 2019) [3]. Considering the vehicle capacity utilization problem, since freight transportation is a primary component of supply chains, horizontal collaboration is considered a crucial strategy to optimize the overall cost and the related environmental and social impacts [4]. A lack of information exchange and the absence of social trust deter horizontal collaboration [5]. A logistics platform is presented to solve the information exchange problem, as in Yunmanman, Huolala et al. In present-day China, the sustainability of such a platform is strategically important, because it can optimize vehicle capacity utilization and reduce empty mileage [6]. That is, the sustainability issue of horizontal collaboration is becoming a challenge for freight transportation in China. In this context, it is significant to understand the interests and interactions of freight transportation stakeholders. In practice, most freight transportation platforms cannot coordinate stakeholders’ interests to ensure the sustainable operation of horizontal collaboration. Therefore, the behaviors and interactions of freight transportation stakeholders from a sustainable operation perspective represent an important and interesting topic, which is our research’s focus.

Specifically, vehicle capacity utilization includes many stakeholders, freight carriers, freight shippers, and logistics platforms, which are considered to be the three critical capacity utilization participants. The three participants often face a conflict of interest when maximizing their respective interests. For example, in the case of weak mutual trust, logistics platforms can often obtain some extra benefits through non-compliant operations. Moreover, the total return of the logistics platform will decrease, which is not aligned with the expected revenue of freight transportation and retards horizontal collaboration. According to Garc´ıa-Perez et al. [7], sustainability can be seen as the result of the coordination of interests among multiple stakeholders. It is almost impossible to achieve the sustainable operation of logistics platforms if the conflicts of interest among logistics platform participants are not balanced [8]. In addition, due to the lack of information exchange, a lack of regulatory systems for logistics platforms, and high privacy security concerns, the regulation of the logistics platform market is typically subject to considerable uncertainty. Therefore, achieving sustainable vehicle capacity utilization depends on the strategic regulatory game that addresses the behaviors of freight carriers, freight shippers, and logistics platforms.

In recent years, issues related to the behavior of actors involved in vehicle capacity utilization have received increasing attention, but this research remains in its early stages. First, most researchers are keen to elaborate on the importance of the issue through case studies [9, 10]. To quantify the economic and environmental benefits of collaboration by companies, Palmer et al. [11] reported a 23% reduction in cost with 58% fewer road kilometers traveled and a 46% reduction in CO2 emissions in an actual strategy examination. Second, research on the improvement of optimization algorithms remains limited in the literature [6, 12, 13]. To reduce the overall cost and related environmental and social impacts, Muñoz-Villamizar et al. [14] proposed a biased randomization-based algorithm to solve the problem with a multiobjective function to explore the relationships between delivery and environmental costs. The optimal selection of vehicle types depends considerably on the time horizon under evaluation and demand variation. Third, from the perspective of sustainable operations, research has focused on mechanisms to coordinate interests using game theory [15]. Hernández et al. [16] indicated that a higher degree of collaboration and capacity utilization improves the tradeoff between collaborative capacity and holding costs. To analyze conflicts of interest, a three-player evolutionary game model (TEGM) emphasizing bounded rationality and dynamic decision-making processes was formulated to study the interest-coordination mechanism among freight transportation participants. On the one hand, due to incomplete information and information asymmetry [17], freight carriers, freight shippers, and logistics platforms fail to acknowledge one another’s decisions (e.g., willingness to cooperate, trust, or privacy security concerns), and they show bounded rationality in their decision making based on their previous interactions. On the other hand, the development of cooperation is hindered, because the model is widely applied in internal rather than external networks. With the profit space continuously narrowed and the pressure from the competitive environment of the logistics industry, it is significant to construct an effective mechanism to facilitate the logistics platforms and the freight transportation companies to collaborate to improve the vehicle capacity utilization, reduce freight costs, and promote the development of freight industry. Thus, the behavioral system among freight carriers, freight shippers, and logistics platforms should be captured by dynamic decision-making processes using the TEGM. It is important to apply a TEGM to study logistics platforms and user companies’ behavioral strategies.

According to an overview of the studies on the behavior of freight transportation participants, the research questions and motivations of this paper are summarized as follows.

Our study intends to answer the following questions:

To address the aforementioned issues, by adopting a stakeholder approach, the conflicts of interest among freight carriers, freight shippers, and logistics platforms are analyzed in this paper. In addition, due to asymmetric information, short-sightedness, and self-interest, freight transportation participants may exhibit bounded rationality in multistage games. A TEGM is developed to analyze the equilibrium and evolutionary stability strategies, which imply the interactions and interest-coordination mechanisms among freight transportation participants.

The purpose of our study is to increase the motivation of freight transportation participants in the logistics platform.

Our contributions are summarized in the following points:

The remainder of the study is organized as follows. “Related work” presents a literature review on dual supply chains. Section “Model formulation” describes the TEGM mathematical model used in this study and the assumptions and notations applied in this paper. Section “Model analysis” introduces the interactions among freight carriers, freight shippers, and logistics platforms. Section “Numerical analysis” performs a numerical analysis to gain additional management insights. Finally, “Conclusions and implications for future research” provides conclusions and directions for future research.

In recent years, to solve the vehicle capacity utilization problem, there has been much-related work is reviewed in terms of the selection of vehicles, the optimization algorithm, the horizontal cooperation mechanism, and the logistics platform for freight sharing.

First, the selection of vehicles is one of the main focuses of this work. Leach et al. [18] increased the maximum length of vehicles to 25.25 m to expand the volumetric carrying capacity. They also contend that high-capacity vehicles will yield valuable environmental and financial benefits but are unlikely to have the same impact on road safety. Liimatainen et al. [19] reported that the use of longer and heavier vehicles (LHVs) for various commodities in road freight transport can ensure considerable savings in traffic volume and emissions. Isler et al. [20] designed a visualized geostrategic railway network for freight services to solve multiple freight type transport problems. Carrone et al. [21] found that the use of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in regular vehicle (RV) operation areas will reshape the transport system and greatly improve capacity utilization. Sun et al. [22] raised a road-rail combined transport form to minimize the total costs and carbon dioxide emissions of the routes. The costs and carbon dioxide emissions problem can be minimized through the selection of vehicles to a certain extent; however, the high-capacity vehicles also mean greater investment in fixed assets.

Second, some scholars have improved optimization algorithms to solve the less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier problem without the investment in fixed assets. Barcos et al. [23] developed an ant colony optimization algorithm to solve real-life less-than-truckload carriers serving many-to-many distribution network problems and solve it for a real case in Spain. To increase truck payload utilization and mitigate externalities, Mesa-Arango and Ukkusuri [24] proposed a branch-and-price algorithm to solve a multicommodity one-to-one pickup-and-delivery vehicle routing problem, which implies that nonconsolidated bids are dominated by consolidated bids. Maknoon et al. [13] proposed a sequential priority-based heuristic algorithm to address the scheduling truck problem in a less-than-truckload logistics network. Estrada-Romeu and Robuste [25] proposed an improved tabu search algorithm to identify when freight consolidation strategies are cost-efficient in less-than-truckload carriers’ operations, which reduces the transportation costs by 20%. Based on the historical data of a freight transport company, Sicilia-Montalvo et al. [26] developed an intuitive application to optimize long-distance freight transport in an improved ant colony algorithm. Wu et al. [27] modeled a vehicle routing problem with a time window supply chain to study the selection between a private trucker and an outside carrier. They also developed a heuristic algorithm to minimize the total cost of the selection. Wang et al. [28] presented a fuzzy mixed-integer linear programming model to optimize imprecise total costs with uncertain data in intermodal freight transportation and took node capacity, detour, and vehicle utilization into account to estimate its performance. Shao et al. [29] proposed an auction-based waste collection synchronization mechanism with a two-layered algorithm to optimize less-than-truckload transportation service procurement in the waste collection industry. Hernández and Peeta [30] insisted that a higher degree of collaboration always leads to a win–win situation in a single-carrier collaboration problem when a less-than-truckload carrier seeks to acquire other carriers’ capacity to service excess demand. Karam and Reinau [31] proposed a double combination to improve the eco-efficiency of road freight transport in empty tractor–semitrailer trips, but it is less effective for just-in-time deliveries. Obviously, the algorithm optimization has achieved great benefits for enterprises, but with the development of the supply chain, the limitation of the enterprise's internal operation optimization becomes more obvious.

Third, other scholars have searched for an effective horizontal cooperation mechanism. Through a case study of the inventory routing problem (IRP) with multiple suppliers and customers, Soysal et al. [32] found that horizontal collaboration among suppliers plays a major role in decreasing total costs and emissions. Based on an incremental perspective, Pomponi et al. [5] found that mutual trust among partners and the extent of cooperation are two main dimensions for companies to achieve horizontal collaborations. Sitadewi et al. [9], using Indonesian case study data, reported that trust is a key enabler of horizontal collaboration in their section on freight trucking transportation. Lotfi et al. [33] used qualitative research methods to understand horizontal collaboration in micro-and small companies, and the results show that relational rents, relational capital, and relational governance mechanisms have important effects on collaboration. To balance the distribution of interests among participants, Vanovermeire et al. [34] insisted that the total cost can be further decreased by applying a Shapley value method, and when the partners adopt a flexible attitude, horizontal logistics alliances can increase both collaborative and individual gains with the Shapley value. Seok and Nof [35] found that bids among manufacturers/coalitions are effective in dealing with collaborative capacity sharing (CCS) problems among manufacturers. Chakravarty et al. [17] studied the optimal contracting problem with a newsvendor model, and the results show that the optimal contract may approach the first-best capacity level and benefit both firms. Padilla Tinoco et al. [36] reported that co-loading is the type of horizontal collaboration that can reduce transportation costs and CO2 emissions; they argued that a cost-sharing agreement might lead to a stable situation for the partnership. More literature on horizontal collaboration is summarized in Serrano-Hernández et al. [37]. De Vos et al. [38] developed a heuristic solution method to solve the cyclic inventory routing problem by considering horizontal collaboration through a third-party logistics service provider. Padmanabhan et al. [39] proposed a solution method based on a large neighborhood search to solve a centralized collaborative planning scheme model, which benefits collaboration among less-than-truckload carriers. Palhazi Cuervo et al. [40] conducted a simulation study to prove that different partner characteristics perform differently in horizontal logistics collaboration. Hacardiaux et al. [41] accounted for partners’ preferences regarding the decrease in logistical costs versus reduced CO2 emissions to formulate a multi-partner multiobjective location-inventory model that ensures fair and efficient horizontal cooperation in logistics.

It is known that horizontal collaboration in logistics would reduce costs, increase fulfillment rates, and decrease CO2 emissions, but it remains rare, because it is not usually sustainable [42]. Buijs et al. [43] investigated the important role of available information technology applications for collaborating freight carriers in the less-than-truckload industry in a case study. Pan et al. [2] provided a literature review on horizontal collaborative transport and reported that the physical internet is a horizontal collaborative transport solution that has been developed since 2010. Although enterprises realize the importance of horizontal cooperation, the lack of effective information exchange and weak mutual trust leads that the horizontal cooperation only occurring in the original close cooperation between enterprises.

To realize efficient information exchange and build mutual trust relationships, logistics platforms for freight sharing have attracted considerable interest. Arnäs et al. [44] developed a platform for transporters’ hybrid shipment control of less-than-truckload (LTL) transport networks to reduce resource requirements and carbon emissions. Royo et al. [12] proposed a mixed delivery system for pallet and package delivery companies to improve the use of resources, which is preferable to a pure system. Atasoy et al. [45] proposed a mixed-integer programming formulation for pickup and delivery problems with time windows to trade off the interests of platform providers, shippers, and carriers and used a dynamic pricing approach to ensure that carriers are better off collaborating. Rodríguez Cornejo et al. [46] presented lean thinking in the physical internet (PI), a value stream map method to minimize waste that is resilient to change, which can easily identify empty transport and unnecessary CO2 emissions. Based on localization data, travel time and time-window constraints, Montecinos et al. [6] proposed a sharing logistics platform with a matching algorithm for less-than-truckload systems to reduce the number of trucks, operational costs, traveling distances, and gas emissions. To maximize the utility of logistics resources utilization, Cai et al. [47] proposed a subsidy strategy to solve the problems in the transaction orders of drivers and consignors on the sharing logistics platform. Logistics platforms are established, but there is a less effective mechanism to make them work effectively.

In summary, although the aforementioned literature has discussed either the behavior of freight transportation participants or horizontal collaboration, there are still limitations that need to be addressed.

To further validate the proposed model, MATLAB R2020b is used to simulate and calculate Scenario 5, which is more complex than the others. To simplify the analysis of the influence of the initial state of the system and related parameters on the development of the final dynamic game, The following conditions need to be imposed on the variables: \(\lambda_{{{11}}} = (1 - t_{2} )r_{CH}^{S} - (1 - t_{1} )r_{CH}^{N} + I_{C} > 0\),\(\lambda_{{{12}}} = (1 - t_{2} )r_{AH}^{S} - (1 - t_{1} )r_{AH}^{N} + I_{A} > 0\), and \(\lambda_{{{63}}} = R_{H} - C_{H} - R_{L} + C_{L} - I_{C} - I_{A} < 0\).

This sub-section explores the effectiveness of models by considering the data of the Yunmanman Company’s real case. Yunmanman Company is a typical representative of the logistics platform in the field of freight transportation. The website address of Yunmanman Company is https://​www.​ymm56.​com/​. The values of parameters are gathered based on the data of both the local government department (http://​hunan.​chinatax.​gov.​cn/​) and experts’ opinions. Specifically, the values of the basic value-added tax rate t₁ = 0.11 and the value-added tax rate after subsidization by the government's preferential policies t₂ = 0.05 are available in the statistics information of the local government department. Nevertheless, other parameters, i.e., the revenue for carriers and shippers under strategy M, the incentive payments of the “high-level service” logistics platform for the carriers and shippers’ “share transportation capacity” strategy are difficult to be determined in practice. Accordingly, the values of such parameters are estimated based on the model assumptions and experts’ opinions of Yunmanman Company, which is similar to Scenario 5. The values of parameters are I_C = 3, I_A = 2, \(r_{CH}^{S}\) = 6.8, \(r_{CH}^{N}\) = 10,\(r_{CL}^{S}\) = 0.5,\(r_{CL}^{N}\) = 1,\(r_{AH}^{S}\) = 7.5,\(r_{AH}^{N}\) = 10, \(r_{AL}^{S}\) = 0.5, and \(r_{AL}^{N}\) = 1. When x = 1, y = 1, and z = 1, that is, the freight carriers choose “share transportation capacity”, the freight shippers choose “share demand information”, and the logistics platform chooses “high-level service”, which is also the development goal of the freight transportation industry in China. To study the influence of key system parameters on the equilibrium strategies, sensitivity analysis on the equilibrium strategies with respect to (x(0), y(0), z(0)), t₂, R_H, I_A, and I_C is conducted. In this study, only one parameter varies, and the others are fixed, and the numerical results are shown in Figs. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

This paper discussed the interaction and cooperation among freight transportation participants from a sustainability perspective. Conflicts of interest among freight carriers, freight shippers and logistics platforms are analyzed. Thereafter, the evolutionary trends of the three participants’ behavioral strategies are analyzed using a three-player evolutionary game model. Finally, the impacts of relevant factors on the evolutionary results of the behavioral strategies of the participants are investigated. The conclusions are as follows:

This study provides several insights into the behavioral theory of freight transportation participants regarding sustainable operation. First, a theoretical link between sustainable principles and the behavior of freight transportation participants is proposed to balance the interests of the participants. Second, this paper aims to design an interest-coordination mechanism among freight transportation participants to guide each participant to choose the behavioral strategy that benefits the sustainability of freight transportation. Third, meaningful suggestions are provided for authorities’ development of freight transportation. In the era of logistics distribution, vehicle capacity utilization has become very common in many areas, such as freight transportation. Therefore, it will be helpful to consider vehicle capacity utilization to study horizontal collaboration on logistics platforms. Furthermore, this study can be extended by introducing the Bayesian network inference mechanism, because the freight demand distribution can be explored over time in a Bayesian manner when it is unavailable. We hope to study these problems in the future.