ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1486669
Crowdsourcing Delivery for Fresh Agricultural Products in China: Exploring the Factors Influencing Individual Participation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China
- 2Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
- 3Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
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As an emerging delivery model in China, the crowdsourcing delivery for fresh agricultural products offers a promising approach to reducing both costs and losses associated with last-mile delivery. To attract more individuals to participate in the crowdsourcing delivery, we developed a model to examine the effects of expected reward, cost, trust, risk, social influence, travel characteristics, promotion conditions and constraints on individuals' participation willingness in crowdsourcing delivery of fresh agricultural products. Based on the questionnaire data of 332 potential participants from in China, we used Structural Equation Model (SEM) to explore the influence paths. As hypothesized, expected reward, trust and social influence positively affect the individual participation willingness in crowdsourcing delivery, while expected cost have has a negative effect. Additionally, we found that social influence exerts a significant indirect effect on participation through its mediation of trust. Based on the these findings, we propose several practical recommendations to enhance participation in crowdsourcing delivery of fresh agricultural products. Such as enhanceenhancing various rewards, establishingset up an interactive community rely on the app of crowdsourcing delivery and establishing a trust mechanism.
Keywords: Fresh agricultural products, crowdsourcing delivery, Participation willingness, structural equation model, Individual participation
Received: 26 Aug 2024; Accepted: 02 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Gong and Shui. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yifei Gong, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, Jiangsu Province, China
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