Coordination of demand and supply in the Sharing Economy

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Nils Boysen; Professor Dr. Dirk Briskorn
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 425058257

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

Examples of the sharing economy range from highly frequented platforms like Uber and Airbnb to niche providers like Freshneck for the exchange of ties. A crucial, constitutive element of the sharing economy is the central IT platform, which coordinates the supply offers from sharing providers with the incoming demand from consumers regarding the use of specific goods. The vast majority of sharing platforms currently employ a decentralized, demand-driven selection mechanism using lists as a coordination mechanism. This project aimed to clarify whether and under what circumstances optimization procedures for the automated allocation of supply and demand can yield better results. To answer this question, suitable deterministic optimization algorithms were developed for specific application areas of the sharing economy and tested in a dynamic and stochastic environment with opportunistic user behavior. For specific applications from the sharing economy, ranging from shared parking spaces to construction containers, suitable matching algorithms for the central IT platform were developed and tested.

Publications

• Single-machine scheduling with an external resource. European Journal of Operational Research, 293(2), 457-468.
  Briskorn, Dirk; Davari, Morteza & Matuschke, Jannik
  
• Anarchy in the UJ: Coordination mechanisms for minimizing the number of late jobs. European Journal of Operational Research, 301(3), 815-827.
  Briskorn, Dirk & Waldherr, Stefan
  
• Crowdshipping by employees of distribution centers: Optimization approaches for matching supply and demand. European Journal of Operational Research, 296(2), 539-556.
  Boysen, Nils; Emde, Simon & Schwerdfeger, Stefan
  
• Make or break: Coordinated assignment of parking space for breaks and rest periods in long-haul trucking. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 164, 45-64.
  Pilz, Danny; Schwerdfeger, Stefan & Boysen, Nils
  
• Modelling and optimising the capacity and production network planning in plastics processing factories. International Journal of Production Research, 61(7), 2105-2128.
  Briskorn, Dirk; Rotfuß, Lena & Helmdach, Marcel
  
• E-platooning: Optimizing platoon formation for long-haul transportation with electric commercial vehicles. European Journal of Operational Research, 304(2), 525-542.
  Scholl, Joachim; Boysen, Nils & Scholl, Armin
  
• Matching supply and demand for free-floating car sharing: On the value of optimization. European Journal of Operational Research, 308(3), 1380-1395.
  Weidinger, Felix; Albiński, Szymon & Boysen, Nils
  
• Matching vs. Individual Choice: How to Counter Regional Imbalance of Carsharing Demand. Transportation Science, 58(1), 198-218.
  Boysen, Nils; Briskorn, Dirk; Röntgen, Rea & Dienstknecht, Michael
  
• Public transport crowdshipping: moving shipments among parcel lockers located at public transport stations. OR Spectrum, 46(3), 873-907.
  Wyrowski, Alexander; Boysen, Nils; Briskorn, Dirk & Schwerdfeger, Stefan
  
• Sharing in construction projects — On determining optimal container assignments for the on-site accommodation of trades. European Journal of Operational Research, 315(1), 324-337.
  Dienstknecht, Michael & Briskorn, Dirk