The Determination Method Of The Maritime Transport Demand And Gateway Port Integration In Multiport Gateway Regions

Chinese shipping industry has made great progress under the background of economic globalization and the rapid development of Chinese export-oriented economy.As the important interface between land transport and sea transport,Chinese ports also expand rapidly and many gateway ports have been built in a same region,which lead to the formation of multiport gateway region(several ports locate in one region).Nowadays,Chinese port cities have invested substantially in expanding their local ports with the "promoting the local economy through port" strategy.Nevertheless,due to the lack of unified planning and several policies have not been fully implemented,the ports in multiport gateway regions have been gradually faced with cutthroat competition and idleness of port assets.Thus,it is necessary to propose effective measures to integrate the gateway ports in multiport gateway regions.The determination of the demand is the basis of facility planning,and the excellent port integration and management plans could be proposed only when the regional shipping demand is determined accurately.Moreover,with the expansion of the port scale in multiport gateway regions in recent years,the shipping accessibility has increased,which will induce more shipping demand and it will form a rolling effect between shipping accessibility and shipping demand.With the above background in mind,the main focuses of our study are to propose the measurement method of shipping accessibility,discuss the relationship between shipping accessibility and shipping demand and then present the determination method of the shipping demand in multiport gateway regions,and finally propose effective method to integrate the gateway ports in the multiport gateway regions.The main contents of the study are as follows:(1)the impacting factors and measurement method of shipping accessibility are studied.The shipper's path and port choice behavior is analyzed and the impacting factors are determined,and then the measurement method of shipping accessibility is proposed based on the discrete choice model.Using 357 cities in China as the origins and eight overseas regions as the destinations for export goods,the shipping accessibilities from each origin to eight overseas regions are calculated based on the data of inland intermodal network and shipping line network.(2)The relationship between shipping accessibility and maritime transport demand is discussed and the determination method of the maritime transport demand in multiport regions is proposed.The consumption market of the products produced in a region is classified into the local market,non-local domestic market and foreign market.Then,to obtain the potential export volumes,the production function,extended linear expenditure system model,and multi-regional input-output model are built to calculate the regional production,the consumption in local market,and the consumption in nonlocal market,respectively.The relationship between real maritime transport demand and potential maritime transport demand and shipping accessibility is studied through the stochastic frontier gravity model,and finally the determination method of maritime transport demand is presented.The calculation results indicate that the maritime transport demand is positive correlated with shipping accessibility for all sectors.(3)The port integration problem in a multi-port region is studied from the perspective of maximizing the social welfare of the internal transport of the external transport system in a closed region in which the ports are regarded as external transport hubs.The economic principle of maximizing the social welfare is firstly analysed,and a method to calculate the total internal transport cost of the external transport system is proposed.Then,the optimal scale of the port group in an MPR is determined by comparing the total internal costs for different scales of the port group.With regard to the excess port supply in multi-port region,an integration model with multi-period investment and asset idling is also proposed with the aim of making the present port scale close to the scale in optimal port layout.Finally,main gateway ports in Northeast China are selected for an empirical study.The study is of great value to port operators,decision-makers in terms of the port planning,integrated operation and policy formation.(4)The gateway port integration problem with the consideration of port upgrading and transformation is studied.According to the product space theory,the feasible paths,industry space and extra benefits for ports with overcapacity to transform and upgrade their industry are analysed.In view of optimizing the social welfare of the internal transport of a closed multi-port region,the method for determining the optimal scale(including port numbers,sizes and locations)of the port group in the multi-port region is presented based on the continuous approximation approach in location theory.Then,the multi-period integration decision model are proposed with the consideration of the impacts of port upgrading on port integration.Two main multiport gateway regions of Liaodong Peninsula and Pearl River Delta in China are selected for empirical study.The study further enriches the extant literature on maritime and port economics,especially the port integration method.