**1. Introduction**

For most of the past decade, the world has been consuming more food than it has been producing it, and the impacts of COVID-19 have further increased global food insecurity [1]. These further enhanced the importance of reliable and efficient logistics. Logistics is an essential part of "agri-business" [2] (p. 2) and agri-food supply chains, and it plays a crucial role in decreasing costs, achieving time reductions, increasing value co-creation and flexibility, as well as securing competitive abilities. Ramos et al. [3] proposed twelve factors in the context of a system for measuring the agri-food supply chains' performance in a developing country: planning, supplier performance, finance, production, demand, inventory, transportation, warehousing, flexibility, quality, innovation, and customer service. This paper answers their call for an in-depth investigation of the metrics related to the different aspects of LSQ.

Other studies in the evolving research field of agricultural supply chains [4] propose breaking down logistics into logistics infrastructure and organization [5] or planning of logistics operations [6] without a concrete proposal for how to measure shippers' expectations. Thus, with the exception of halal food [7], studying logistics in agri-food supply

**Citation:** Dovbischuk, I. Sustainability in Logistics Service Quality: Evidence from Agri-Food Supply Chain in Ukraine. *Sustainability* **2023**, *15*, 3534. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su15043534

Academic Editors: Fred Amofa Yamoah and David Eshun Yawson

Received: 19 January 2023 Revised: 9 February 2023 Accepted: 10 February 2023 Published: 14 February 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

chain settings lacks the customer perspective. This paper aims to fill this research gap with some evidence from an emerging economy.

Following the International Monetary Fund's classification [8] (pp. 89–92), many recent research publications discuss LSQ in the so-called advanced economies [9–12] or in emerging markets or economies in transition in Asia [13–20], while only a few focus on LSQ in Latin America [21] or Europe [22]. This publication fills the gap about expectations and levels of logistics quality in emerging and developing European economies, collecting evidence in rural Ukraine.

Ukraine has been the world's leading exporter of sunflower oil for many years and one of the leading global exporters of grains such as corn, wheat, barley, and sunflower seeds [23]. The success of its agriculture sector is highly dependent on transportation systems and logistics competence. A poor transportation system and the absence of storage facilities are some of the challenges hampering agri-food supply chains. Logistics competence and improving logistics infrastructure can improve the agricultural supply chain. Hence, this paper focuses on agri-logistics and is based on empirical data, collected from agri-businesses in the geographical center of the country. To the best of the author's knowledge, there are no publications on LSQ in rural Ukraine.

In filling the above-mentioned gaps, this paper focuses on the development of metrics on logistics-related factors in the agri-food supply chain and collects evidence about expectations and levels of logistics quality, thus adding to the scant literature on emerging and developing European economies. Last but not least, this paper investigates LSQ from the perspective of agri-businesses using scales that address sustainability.

This paper aims to test the pre-defined conceptual model of the dimensions of LSQ in the agri-food supply chain in the developing economy of Ukraine and to test whether there is a substantial difference between the expected and perceived factors affecting LSQ with regard to social and environmental sustainability.

The paper is structured as follows: The introduction is given in Section 1. The statistical methodology, hypotheses, sample profile, and data collection are outlined in Section 2. Section 3 encompasses a literature review and the conceptual model. Analysis and discussion are given in Section 4. The paper is rounded off with conclusions in Section 5.
