[en] We report a systematic study on the current injection and radiative carrier recombination in InP nanowire (NW) light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The InP NWs with axial p–n structures, grown by selective-area metal organic vapor-phase epitaxy, had mixed crystal structures between those of zincblende and wurtzite, mainly in the p-regions. The temperature dependence of the current–voltage (I–V), electroluminescence (EL), and current–light output (I–L) characteristics was investigated. The temperature dependence of the I–V characteristics revealed that tunneling was the main mechanism of carrier transport through the p–n junction in the present NW-LEDs. The temperature and bias voltage dependences of EL showed a complex but systematic behavior, where peaks exhibiting bias-dependent and independent energy positions coexisted and the relative intensity showed a transition with increasing temperature. The external quantum efficiency showed a droop at low temperatures, indicating a reduced injection efficiency at low temperatures. These observations were explained by the radiative and nonradiative tunneling, and suggested a strong effect of the nonradiative tunneling at low temperatures. (paper)