Research On Incentive Mechanism Based On Voyage Game Between Inland Port And Carrier

There is a natural advantage of inland waterway network in Guangdong Province, but the status of inland waterway transportation in overall transportation system have failed to get promoted over the years. Due to the weak competitiveness of inland waterway transportation, the transportation mode of cargo can’t achieve the ideal state ’one kind of cargo should be transported in its appropriate way’. As is known, inland waterway transportation is of low cost, but the natural advantage would not exist once its service time is beyond the owners’ acceptance. It is bottleneck in the development of inland waterway transportation. Because the transportation distance of Pearl River is short, it is vital to shorten the waiting time of goods in ports to enhance the competitiveness of inland waterway transportation service chain in Guangdong. And one of the most effective ways is to increase the number of voyages anchored in the ports. Inland port and inland carrier are taken as the objects of study and focuses on the issue about voyage-setting in this paper. On the basis of the contact theory in supply chain, it is brought up in this paper that a reasonable incentive mechanism should be established by inland port operator between inland port and carrier in order to achieve the perfect coordination of service capacities and "win-win" in profitability, and ultimately promote the competitiveness of the whole inland waterway transportation service chain. The results are expected to provide the port operator and the carrier with some references.Two scenarios are assumed in this article:random demands and voyage-dependence demands. Respectively, in both cases, three contracts:port charge discount, voyage subsidy and revenue sharing are quantitative calculated and compared by means of two-party cooperative and leader-follower game theory. The specific indicators include the number of voyages and the profits of inland port and carrier.In addition, in the case of random demands the relative chapter focuses on the influences caused by the fluctuation of demands and the degree of risk aversion on the coordination effects of the contracts. The case analysis of Yunfu new port shows that:when both the inland port operator and inland carrier are risk neutral, the larger the randomness of demands are, the more notable the coordination effects are; When both the inland port operator and inland carrier are risk averse, the party with the higher degree of risk aversion will get less profits from the coordination.On the assumption of voyage-dependence demands, the relative chapter focuses on the influence caused by asymmetric information of voyage costs on the coordination effects. The case analysis of Yunfu new port shows that:in the case of asymmetric information, both the revenue sharing contract and port charge discount contract are better than the voyage subsidy contract.Finally, three research directions including the refinement of costs, time lag in the increase of voyages and multi-game in river-sea coordinated transport are elaborated for the further study.