Last-mile delivery in urban areas causes many problems, including air pollution, nuisance, and congestion. There are various delivery methods, which differ in terms of costs, sustainability impacts, and societal impacts. One of these methods is crowdshipping. According to literature, crowdshipping is a promising solution to various last-mile delivery problems, because it promises social (less nuisance), economic (cheaper delivery), and environmental benefits (less fuel consumption). In order to investigate whether crowdshipping is a delivery method that can be implemented in urban areas in the Netherlands, this thesis researched the success and failure factors (SFFs). This thesis aims to fill this knowledge gap by answering the main research question: What are the success and failure factors of crowdshipping in urban areas in the Netherlands, and what implications do they have for future implementation?

To answer the main research question, five analyses have been performed. First, a literature review distinguished two manners of crowdshipping, namely value-driven crowdshipping and profit-driven crowdshipping. Second, based on the two manners that were distinguished in the previous analysis, a societal impacts analysis showed that the crowdshipping manner highly affects whether the societal impacts will be positive or negative. Value-driven crowdshipping will have positive societal impacts and profit-driven crowdshipping will have negative impacts. Third, a stakeholder analysis showed that the courier's power is high because they form the supply. The biggest problems between couriers and customers are trust and safety issues. Value-driven crowdshipping receives more support and user acceptance than profit-driven crowdshipping. Fourth, focus groups were conducted to deepen the knowledge of value-driven crowdshipping with travellers by applying a participatory method rather than literature study. Although literature was very optimistic about their user acceptance, the results from the focus groups showed that participants of potential courier target groups have a negative attitude towards participation. Fifth, in the SFF framework construction, the results of the previous analyses and their implications for the SFFs are integrated. A general framework and two specific frameworks for value-driven and profit-driven crowdshipping were constructed. The main outtake of the framework is that the factors affecting trust and user acceptance are the most important factors that should be improved for crowdshipping to work. Happy crowd is crucial because this factor was seen in all previous analyses. The way to obtain the happy crowd differs for value-driven or profit-driven crowdshipping. Linked to this, critical mass of couriers is highly important because this affects the effectiveness. Finally, the manner in which crowdshipping is implemented (value-driven or profit-driven) influences the environmental benefits. This impacts the perceived effectiveness and customer experience, which in turn affect trust and user acceptance.

The following conclusion is drawn from this research. If crowdshipping is to be implemented, the value-driven manner is recommended because this yields positive societal impacts. Therefore, the couriers are travellers instead of dedicated couriers. However, crowdshipping implementation in urban areas in the Netherlands has significant failure factors. Involvement of local governments and more research into minimisation of courier efforts are necessary to overcome these. However, it is unsure whether these failure factors can be readily overcome. Therefore, it is debatable whether crowdshipping is the most desired solution to resolve urban delivery problems. Future research should focus on investigating how the trust and user acceptance failure factor could be overcome.