Are consumers ready to pay extra for crowd-shipping e-groceries and why? A hybrid choice analysis for developing economies

This paper presents the results of a behavioral study on consumers’ willingness-to-pay the extra for e-grocery deliveries based on crowd-shipping. The proposed methodology was tested for Ukraine, i.e., a developing country where the crowd-shipping services are under development conditions. The choice model was enhanced with two latent variables to account for the behavior complexity of the consumers who have not faced crowd-shipping services in the past. These variables were extracted through factor analysis to encompass pro-crowd-shipping and pro-commercial carrier attributes. The willingness-to-pay for e-grocery deliveries based on crowd-shipping and commercial carriers was estimated using hybrid choice modeling results. The findings indicate more than two times higher willingness-to-pay for saving delivery time for crowd-shipping compared to commercial carrier services. Discrete choice analysis of consumer-related attributes identified males with cons-crowd-shipping attitudes. Age-wise, consumers younger than 30 years exhibited pro-crowd-shipping behavior. The direct and cross elasticities have been estimated to evaluate the impacts of variation in service-specific attributes on the consumer’s behavior within e-groceries scope.