Socioeconomic factors affecting the job satisfaction levels of self-employed container truck drivers: a case study from Shanghai Port

ABSTRACT

The job satisfaction level (JSL) of self-employed container truck drivers (SCTDs) is vital to the container trucking industry’s (CTI) stability in China. An anonymous field survey of 645 SCTDs was conducted at Shanghai Port. Three ordered probit models were, respectively, developed to analyze the drivers’ JSLs, their attitudes, and reactions to a CTI downturn. This study contributes to the literature that the demographic variables were not statistically significant for the SCTDs’ current JSLs, while higher income SCTDs with fewer expenses were expected to have higher JSLs. During an industry downturn, drivers with families in Shanghai showed more job dissatisfaction. More working hours, lower income, expensive diesel fuel, a high consumer price index (CPI), and a low freight-to-distance ratio (FDR) significantly lowered the JSLs. An increase in the price of diesel fuel and the CPI, and a lower FDR exposed the industry to risk and instability. Additionally, credible evidence indicated that as the dissatisfaction levels of SCTDs rise in a downturn, SCTDs implement more practical measures that may negatively affect the industry’s stability as well as society’s. Based on these findings, managerial or policy implications were proposed to efficiently improve SCTDs’ JSLs and CTI stability in Shanghai.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy and management
• job satisfaction levels
• self-employed container truck drivers
• ordered probit model

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51508325] and the Shanghai Transport and Port Research Center (a research institution attached to Shanghai Municipal Transport and Port Authority) Program, ‘Maintaining and Warning the Stability of Container Trucking Industry in Shanghai.’ The authors would like to thank two anonymous referees for their excellent comments that greatly helped to improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Driver fatigue is not necessarily related to driving time and distance alone. The time of day when driving is performed, the amount of off-duty time for the driver to sleep, and whether the sleep time is during the night or during the day are also key factors.

2. Since a large number of SCTDs were available for this study, to improve efficiency, a few drivers identified as CEDs were not included in the survey.

3. To ensure randomness, drivers were selected during normal operations. We employed the policemen (Group A) to initiate the survey to avoid potential accidents between people and trucks, because the interviewers (Group B) did not have the authority to pull over trucks at the container yards to conduct the survey. The sole role of the police in this survey was to get access to qualified respondents (i.e. SCTDs) for the interviewers, and the policemen were not involved in any procedure during step two.

4. SEX was unnecessary because all of the respondents were male. Forty-two (6.39%) drivers were reported to be unmarried; 14 (2.13%) had owned property in Shanghai, and 2 of those were unmarried.

5. The correlation matrix is available to the reader upon request.

6. Note that the correlation between EXPEN. and DIESEL is 0.211, which means that from a statistic perspective for the sample population, EXPEN. may not significantly correlate with DIESEL. Besides, our focus lean more on statistical modeling significance of the explanatory variables but might not on the simple results of correlation tests previously conducted among independent variables, as long as situations like perfect or near perfect correlation are reasonably avoided and excluded.

7. Note that SCTDs’ chosen downturns may vary across different respondents with their uneven working experiences in Shanghai, but we treat the risk of industry instability not by the qualitative difference between heterogeneous perception of ‘industry downturn,’ but to acquire corresponding measurably quantitative indexes (i.e. CPI, the price of diesel fuel and the FDR) as model inputs.

8. For instance, although many respondents chose the same period for their industry downturn, their responses in terms of diesel price were greatly different. These biased diesel price data were therefore corrected to credible values, according to the guidance prices for domestic refined diesel officially released by the National Development and Reform Commission.

9. STTA is the abbreviation for the Shanghai Transportation Trade Association.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51508325] and the Shanghai Transport and Port Research Center (a research institution attached to Shanghai Municipal Transport and Port Authority) Program, ‘Maintaining and Warning the Stability of Container Trucking Industry in Shanghai.’ [grant number 51508325].