Empirical study of the impact of operating environment on China’s cooperative logistics outsourcing relationships

Since 1990s, logistics outsourcing has become the tendency of logistics operation. Through collecting and analyzing the data from a random sample of Chinese manufacturing executives, this article identifies the impact of operating environment on cooperative logistics outsourcing relationships between Chinese manufacturers and international logistics providers. Hypothesis testing was conducted by regression models using summed scales for four environmental variables (asset specificity, transaction volume, capacity, similarity) as independent measures and the scales representing the five elements of cooperative relationship (assistance, continuity, flexibility, information exchange and monitoring) as dependent variables. Evaluation of the results of hypothesis testing is based on the overall robustness and fit of the regression models and the significance of individual parameters. It was found that transaction volume, assets specificity had basically positive impact on cooperative relationships and the capacity of demand and similarity of logistics service negatively impacted the cooperative relationships.