Port choice in container market: a literature review

ABSTRACT

As a result of the intense changes occurring in port environment over the last decades, new models of competitiveness have been developed, where port authorities try to increase their attractiveness. In this context, one of the most debated issues in this area of research is still the role played by port authorities in defining port competitiveness. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of port choice literature enabling to identify the main port choice’s criteria in order to define the role played by Port Authorities and to point out future lines of research that should be undertaken to fully incorporate current ports’ environment and performance. The results show that although some studies point out the importance of geographical factors in port choice, a larger number of studies defend the increasing role played by port authorities in determining the competitiveness through investing in port infrastructure, improving port efficiency or hinterland accessibility. Despite the existing models contributing on this topic, there are still some gaps in terms of measuring the port performance, including port strategies and studying the port choice for specific industries.

KEYWORDS:

• Port choice
• decision-makers behaviour
• port authorities
• port competitiveness
• factors beyond control
• factors under control

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Julián Martínez Moya is Ph.D. candidate at the University of Valencia and part of the International Economics Institute of Valencia. His research includes the study of port choice and port governance.

María Feo Valero is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economic Structure of the University of Valencia and member of the International Economics Institute of Valencia. Her research interests include the study of freight transport demand determinants and the analysis of European freight transport policy.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under its National Programme for Research Aimed at the Challenges of Society [grant number ECO2014-58674_R] and the Generalitat Valenciana under Grant GV/2015/096 supporting R&D Projects of Emerging Research Groups 2015.