Divergent effects of container port choice incentives on users' behavior

Abstract

Port choice decisions are often considered to be based on unambiguous choice criteria. The authors examine how port users' evaluation of these criteria can differ and how this may affect actors' incentive structure and decision making, and ultimately port performance. Apart from ports' physical characteristics, the paper considers port policy and freight market conditions as components of actors' incentive structures. As port users interact, each actor's decision making has consequences for the incentives offered to others-with an important role for strategic behavior. The aggregate of port users' decisions affects a port's throughput, cargo composition, and value added, and has implications for handling efficiency. This paper combines these insights within an overarching framework linking port characteristics, policy, and freight market conditions to port user choice behavior and the consequences for ports. The paper explores various facets of this framework using the case of how the Port of Rotterdam competes along the Hamburg-Le Havre range, drawing on port throughput data on various levels of detail and in-depth interviews with a representative selection of port stakeholders. It shows that there is a downside to ports being particularly attractive to carriers, in that the port that offers the most incentives to carriers disproportionately attracts relatively low-value activities: inefficient calls and a large share of empty containers, along with a strong import/export imbalance. Interview findings contextualize the findings from the data and elaborate further on the mechanisms underpinning these observations. Most importantly, the attractiveness of a port for carriers does not always translate into attractiveness for shippers. The challenge for port policy is to balance the port's positioning toward its different categories of users and achieve a congruent value proposition for all port users.

Identifying Dominant Stakeholder Perspectives on Sustainability Issues in Reefer Transportation. A Q-Method Study in the Port of Rotterdam

“…For this study, we aimed at including different stakeholder types (the port authority and the most important types of port actors, including shippers, carriers, terminal operators, logistics service providers (LSPs), transportation service providers (TSPs), etc. [30]), as well as different types of organizations within these categories: Small and large organizations, locally and internationally operating, and, for example, deep-sea as well as short-sea carriers, LSPs that include cold store operators as well as traditional forwarders, and shippers with a focus on different types of products, such as fruit, vegetables, or flowers. Within each stakeholder organization, we recruited respondents in expert or decision-making roles to ensure that their responses would reflect as closely as possible the real considerations of their organization.…”

Identifying port maritime communities: application to the Spanish case

“…Ports are part of a supply chain in which the stakeholders and their preferences are very heterogeneous. In this context, it is impossible to understand the decision-making processes of each actor without considering that these processes are all related to each other [ 14 ].…”

The ostensible tension between competition and cooperation in ports: a case study on intra-port competition and inter-organizational relations in the Rotterdam container handling sector

“…For the purpose of this analysis, it is assumed that terminals operating in the same port are exposed to similar institutional pressures that drive the inter-organizational relationships between these terminals. sea, and deep-sea connectivity and service reliability as major port choice criteria (Martínez Moya and Feo Valero 2017;Parola et al 2017), it is in the interest of all stakeholders in the port that these processes run smoothly and reliably, or else the port risks losing its position in these supply chains (Castelein et al 2019). The integration of various processes and activities between actors is an essential underpinning of the efficiency and competitiveness of the port cluster overall (Lavissière and Rodrigue 2017).…”

“…between different ports serving the same supply chains and/or hinterland) (Verhoeff 1981;Haezendonck 2001;Wang and Zhang 2018). So far, inter-port competitionbetween different ports competing for users' business has received the most attention in the maritime and port economics literature Lagoudis et al 2017;Castelein et al 2019). Intra-port competitionand more broadly inter-organizational behavior within ports (including competition, as well as cooperation and other configurations of interaction and mutual dependence) have received relatively little attention, with some exceptions that do address the complexities in relations between port actors (De Langen and Pallis 2006; Van der Horst and De Langen 2008; Hall and Jacobs 2010; Verhoeven 2010; De Martino et al 2013;Jaffee 2017).…”