Title: The role of the degree of use of the facilities in the port choice process: the Spanish dockside cranes case

Authors: Ana Martínez-Pardo; Lorena Garcia-Alonso; Alfonso Orro

Addresses: Group of Railways and Transportation Engineering, Universidade da Coruña, ETS Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Elviña, 15071 A Coruña, Spain ' Applied Economics Department, Regional Economics Laboratory (Regiolab), University of Oviedo, Spain ' Group of Railways and Transportation Engineering, Universidade da Coruña, ETS Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Elviña, 15071 A Coruña, Spain

Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyse how the degree of use of port facilities influences the port choice process. In order to achieve that goal, a multinomial logit model was firstly proposed and then applied to a case study. In this particular case, the relationship between the container traffic and the availability of cranes was considered for the main Spanish peninsular container ports. From the obtained results, it can be concluded that the port throughput contributes positively to attract traffic because of the economies of agglomeration and the scale and network effects achieved; however, there is a threshold of traffic beyond which the attractiveness of ports decreases. The proposed methodological approach also allows to obtain the functional form of the analysed relationship without establishing it a priori.

Keywords: shipping logistics; port competition; container traffic; port facilities congestion; saturation threshold; ship-to-shore gantry cranes; decision making; discrete choice theory; DCM; multinomial logit model; Spanish port system.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2018.095221

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2018 Vol.10 No.5/6, pp.514 - 532

Received: 03 Nov 2016
Accepted: 20 Jul 2017
Published online: 02 Oct 2018 *

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