An empirical study on the innovation sharing express box: Collaborative consumption and the overlay network design

Sharing express boxes is an effective disposal method for obsolete express packages. Its appearance also represents an unstoppable trend in the development of green logistics. This paper takes the sharing express box as research object and conducts two-stage research. In the first stage, the collaborative consumption theory and calculus are used to analyze the economic benefits that sharing express boxes bring to operators, that is, to demonstrate the feasibility of this business model from an economic perspective. In the second stage, the design of the overlay network is studied from the management science perspective. Firstly, an optimal coverage model is established considering the characteristics of the sharing express box, and cleaning costs, relocation costs, etc. are all integrated into the model. Secondly, the genetic algorithm is used to solve the model. A numerical example is described to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed method. In addition, sensitivity analysis investigates the effect of hub coverage change on the results. Finally, the theoretical guidance gained from this paper can be beneficial to the sustainable development of sharing express boxes.