Essays on port system development in the new environment

Abstract

Due to the witnessed inland duplication of port functions, the port therefore becomes an intermodal logistics system centered on seaport rather than the traditional maritime logistics node. The undergoing transition in port industry brings new questions on port planning, investment, competition and operations under the increasing environmental concerns among global supply chain and the unsolved worldwide economic crisis. Previous researches on port operation are composed mainly based on the belief that maximizing cargo throughput is the critical and only objective of port operation. However, other dimensions of port evaluation, such as the service quality and Marginal Output, need to be considered under dramatically changing operating environment. This dissertation, which contains six separate essays, studies the operation and development of port-oriented system under the carbon reduction through the integrated logistics network and the recent economic recession. The first essay seeks to understand influences of logistics decarbonization on port operation and ports' optimal strategic responds applying qualitative analysis. The analysis highlights the content and strategic scope of attaining the competitive advantage of port in the structural change of the competitive environment due to the new atmospheric requirements on logistics network based with broad literature review. The second and third evaluate port sections efficiency with modified DEA models by considering Marginal Output and Service Quality as output indicators in port operations. Marginal Output measures the operational performance of port operators while erasing the influence of hinterland economy on port throughput; while Service Quality measures how well a delivered intermodal logistics service matches the customers' expectation. The second essay assesses the productivity of the Chinese major container terminals during the time period from 2004 to 2007 and the result explores the significance of dealing with economic heterogeneity for container port efficiency evaluation. The third essay focuses on analyzing the efficiency of 26 dry ports located in Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust region in Year 2008 and 2009. Subsequently this essay attempts to find out which of the efficiency estimates so derived are more relevant from the stakeholder's perspective. The forth essay applies the SERVQUAL model to measure the service quality of dry ports from India and analyze the gaps in its quality of service. The research recalls service quality as one important indicator for performance evaluation of logistics industry. This study ascertains the reasons behind the differences in perspective of service quality and the groups of participators, as well as the policy effects on the service quality of dry port industry. The third and forth essays are two of the scare studies that the service quality of dry ports is taken into the evaluation consideration in terms of SERVQUAL score. The fifth essay suggests a new framework, which contains determinants for location and practical group decision-making model, to explore an appropriate route for dry port planning. The suggested model modifies a geometric least square method that overcomes the inconsistence of judgment matrix. Numerical example is given based on data collected from the experiments and industrial organization. The sixth essay examines the port choice behavior of port investors by utilizing a random choice model based on data of major container port of China. A random risk-minimization model is established to analyze the investors' behavior under the global economic recession. The findings indicate that the location of the port, the economic development level of the hinterland, the logistic network combined with government support play significant roles in attracting private investment. The overall conclusion is summarized as follows. (1) port operators and authorities should emphasize more on improving operational performance and inland port networking, besides reducing inner carbon emission technically, to better compete in the new environment; (2) evaluation of port performance should involve more indicators that presented different perspectives of operational objective to reduce the deviations to the actual characteristics; (3) design and planning of the port-oriented system need to be conducted based on practical framework and updated analysis to catch the changing demand of stakeholders.