Factors influencing enterprises' willingness in crowd logistics: A research on enterprises operating in Turkey

The concept of sharing economy, which has been in widespread use since the 2000s, has expanded its usage in its various localised forms in many fields and sectors. Crowd logistics, which is the reflection of this concept in the logistics sector, is the transfer of logistics services to an actor of masses through a digital platform. This transfer can take place between individuals (travelers, transporters, authorized drivers, owners of empty storage spaces, etc.) as well as between businesses and individuals. Crowd logistics is a flexible business model that is thought to have great deal of potential to contribute to sustainable logistics. Through literature survey, it has been observed that due to concept of crowdlogistics being relatively new, the area hasn't become a subject of research in international literature untill 2010, and the studies in national scope are observed to be limited. When it comes to practises of sectoral basis, it has been noticed that while the world examples are more developed and numerous, national examples are relatively less and generally the versions of the commonly used applications of foreign origin. Although there are some moot points because of its newness, importance of crowdlogistics is thought to be on rise even more with the spread of digitization globally. It has also been discovered that the studies are predominantly focused on the subject of the 'mass', in developed western economies, and that the studies from the perspective of enterprises are relatively minority. Bin and his colleagues (2020) explored the factors affecting the implementation of crowdlogistics in perspective of logistic enterprises in their proposed model "Factors Affecting Enterprises Willingness to Implement Crowdsourcing Logistics" by using the technology-organisation-environment (TOE) theory and created a portrait of enterprises operating in a certain region in China. In this study, the factors affecting the willingness of the enterprises operating in Turkey have been tried to be discovered. Another objective of this study is to determine which skills enterprises should enhance with the results of the questionnaire conducted with the lower, middle and senior managers working in logistics enterprises operating in Turkey. The results have shown that external motivation, relative advantages, resources, absorptive capacity have a positive impact on company's willingness to implement crowdlogistics, while complexity and market environment haven't presented any significant impact. It was aimed for this study to fill in the literature and knowledge gap of this new concept in a national scope, and to create a framework and propose possible ideas for future researches.Although there are some moot points because of its newness, importance of crowdlogistics is thought to be on rise even more with the spread of digitization globally. It has also been discovered that the studies are predominantly focused on the subject of the 'mass', in developed western economies, and that the studies from the perspective of enterprises are relatively minority. Bin and his colleagues (2020) explored the factors affecting the implementation of crowdlogistics in perspective of logistic enterprises in their proposed model "Factors Affecting Enterprises Willingness to Implement Crowdsourcing Logistics" by using the technology- organisation-environment (TOE) theory and created a portrait of enterprises operating in a certain region in China. In this study, the factors affecting the willingness of the enterprises operating in Turkey have been tried to be discovered. Another objective of this study is to determine which skills enterprises should enhance with the results of the questionnaire conducted with the lower, middle and senior managers working in logistics enterprises operating in Turkey. The results have shown that external motivation, relative advantages, resources, absorptive capacity have a positive impact on company's willingness to implement crowdlogistics, while complexity and market environment haven't presented any significant impact. It was aimed for this study to fill in the literature and knowledge gap of this new concept in a national scope, and to create a framework and propose possible ideas for future researches.