The Impact of 3PL(Third-Party Logistics) Partnerships by Food Delivery Platform on Delivery Service Quality and Rider Earnings

This study empirically analyzed how 3PL (third-party logistics) cooperation among food delivery platforms has changed delivery service, quality, customer experience, and delivery rider earnings. To this end, a difference-in-differences model was constructed, drawing upon, monthly panel data on delivery rider operations from January 2023 to June 2025—a period of two years and six months. This model was based, on 2, 993, 310 cases. The subsequent analysis revealed that following the implementation of 3PL, there was a 25.5% decrease in the rate of, customer experience deterioration, an improvement of 1.7%p in the rate of deliveries completed within 20 minutes of customer notification, and, a 15.0% increase in delivery riders’ hourly earnings. These effects remained robust even after controlling for fixed effects, including delivery, riders, months, regions, operating hours, operating days, and delivery counts. This finding lends further credence to the hypothesis that, third-party logistics based operations, characterized by their specialization and standardization, exert a concomitant and positive influence on, both the competitiveness of delivery platform services and the earnings of delivery riders. This study posits that collaborative strategies, between delivery platforms and logistics companies can foster value creation across the entire food delivery ecosystem, thereby offering policy, , practical, and academic implications.