Can delivery riders act as informal guardians in crime prevention?

In recent years, the surge of delivery riders for the Internet platform economy has drawn widespread attention and sparked debate regarding their roles in urban governance. While some reported their traffic violations and disorderly conduct, 93 % of news reports observed their beneficial acts in urban governance. Whether the delivery riders can act as informal guardians who may potentially prevent crime has yet to be explored quantitatively in existing literature. To fill the gap, using mobile phone big data, this study identified and quantified the spatial distribution of delivery riders in ZG city. Then, this study employed a zero-inflated negative binomial model to analyze the relationship between their spatial distribution and street crime. Results showed that nearly 15,000 delivery riders of ZG city were identified from a large sample of mobile phone trajectory data, and they are mainly concentrated in economically active areas with busy commerce and service activities and dense populations. The number of riders’ visits exhibits a significant negative association with street crime. This demonstrates that delivery riders can indeed act as informal guardians, which has not been previously reported in existing literature. This study enriches the theory of informal guardianship in the Internet platform economy era and highlights the social value of delivery riders in urban governance, offering practical insights for urban safety planning.