An Empirical Study Of Sea Port Competitiveness And Spatial Evolution Of Hinterland

Economic globalization,the strategy of global network and using of large ships in the shipping industry lead to a more multi-functional,systematized integration in ports industry.The factors influencing port competitiveness are also more complex.Port competition and competitiveness have attracted the attention of the research community.Practice has proved that coastal export-oriented economic strategy cannot do without the support of port hinterland.The range,size and energy of the economy of hinterland are the source for the development of the port,and the industrial structure of hinterland as well.It is a complicated spatial system between port and hinterland,influenced by various factors,internal and external.Sole economic factor is not sufficient to explain current port dynamics.Exogenous factors,political factors,regional integration and port competition are more important to nautical accessibility and technological performance within the port.Improving port competitiveness is a complex process in which various factors are involved.It is very complex or even not feasible to draw the hinterland‘s shape as its extension can largely vary with respect to factor and its condition.Study offers great sight on the factors measuring.According to New Economic Geography theories,some spatial dynamics may be commodity-specific.Based on the study of the complex spatial relations between port and hinterland,Factor analysis method that is usually used to measure complex factors objectively and feasibly,is employed to determine the competitiveness of ports.In order to analyze the dynamic spatial interaction between port and hinterlands,Huff‘s Model is introduced to show the attractiveness on cargo flow.This dissertation focus on the following aspects.(1)literature review.Based on the introduction of the theory of Economic Geography and port,the author reviews the research on port system,port-hinterland relationships,port performance,port competition and cooperation。A summary is made about the methodology and theory development on the spatial analysis of port-hinterland relationships.The literature review provides a guide for further study on port-hinterland s(2)Mechanism analysis on the port-hinterland relationships and port-city relationships.This dissertation presents empirical analysis of Ningbo-Zhoushan port,with two primary aims.First,to provide a detailed case study of the relationships between port logistics and city economy;and second,to reveal the effect of port logistics on the development of international trade in its province,Zhejiang.Due to the structure of the Ningbo-zhoushan port prominent transit,port logistics is the Granger cause of foreign trade growth,changes in the provincial foreign trade is not the cause of the port logistics growth.(3)Empirical analysis on the competitiveness of 20 sea ports mainland China.On basis of analysis about port market competition structure and situation,an index system including factors on port scale,support of port city and international trade condition is constructed to test the port competitiveness.This dissertation introduces Factor analysis to evaluate port competitiveness,by using SPSS software.Factors like ‘scale of port and city’ operation efficiency of wharf ‘condition of trade and external logistics’ are extracted,which affect the results of ports separately and yearly.According to the results of the scoring,the 20 sea ports can be divided into four levels.(4)Empirical analysis on the spatial evolution of hinterlands.Huff‘s Model is introduced to examine the hinterlands accessibility and spatial evolution of hinterlands of port in different international trade situation.The result shows that the changes of port competitiveness make different shape of the ports‘ hinterland.And the evolution from 2001 to 2014 shows the characteristics of port type differences and regional layout differences.The location of port,the scale and size of port-city,international trade situation,the operate efficiency of wharf and facilities,are the main causes that make the difference of port hinterland.(5)conclusion.According to the basic conclusion of the empirical analysis,and the limitation of the study,the future research on port hinterland is discussed.China’s foreign trade turns into the relatively stable development period,and the economic transformation makes industrial production in limited increase in supply and demand.These will cause issue of fierce competition among sea ports.So the sea ports need to explore new mode of cooperation.The trend of integration,the strategy and option by shipping liners,the condition of network by multimodal transport operators,global integration strategy by terminal operators,all these will become the new focus of port competition in future,and also the new direction of study on the spatial relationships between the port and hinterland.