Research On Northeast Main Seaports' Hinterland Segmentation

With the fast development of World's economy and the enlargement of international trade volume of China, the function and position of ports has become more and more important, the concepts of "Booming with the ports" and "Booming together with the ports " have been the development and planning objective of the port cities and even the regional economy of ports. The port economy which is composed of ports and hinterland will play a more and more important strategic role in China's social economy.The linear increasing of China's international trade caused the fast development of coastal cities, which resulted in fierce competition among the ports. The point concentrated on good resource of hinterland. Port hinterland is the basis of surviving and development of ports, which decides the port positioning, layout and planning. The extension of the hinterland is not only related to the self-construction and development of the port, but also related to the development of regional economy.At present, there exist several problems in port hinterland segmentation. The blindly expansion of the ports to attract cargo has resulted in duplicated construction and waste of resources; the irrational competition for cargo flow and volume in similar geographical region has affected the rationality of ports development. All these problems need to be solved by the analysis of the port hinterland, and the use of effective methods of dividing port hinterland.Based on the limitation of present status of hinterland segmentation and the relevant method, this paper is an attempt of the study of these issues. Firstly, the related theories and recent research have been introduced, pointing out the writing ideas and research purpose. Secondly, relevant theories of port hinterland division have been put forward, and problems of the current status and the necessity of the research have been pointed out. By analyzing the traditional division methods and their limitations, gravitational model has been given as a new method to divide the hinterlands. Through comprehensive consideration of the various factors that influence the division of hinterlands. and by using factor analysis by SPSS15.0, the attraction of ports of Northeast of China for hinterlands has been quantified, and a rough region of hinterlands has been found. Take advantage of the method aforementioned, we divided the hinterland of Northeast ports, and give the governments relevant suggestions on ports' planning and design.