Research On The Hinterland Evolution And Driving Force Of Container Port In The Yangtze River Delta

In view of the significant impacts of ports on the national economy,rational and wellplanned port development has been increasing importance.Under the fiercely competition that has developed since the financial crisis,the relationship between port and hinterland has changed.The accurate delineation of port hinterland and analysis of hinterland evolution characteristics are the premise of optimizing port function layout and strengthening port resource integration.The Yangtze River Delta(YRD)port group has the densest port distribution and the largest cargo throughput in China.Therefore,this thesis takes the YRD as the research sample,and firstly studies the changes of the port hinterland in the YRD after the financial crisis.Then,the influence of port-hinterland relationship change and hinterland container volume variation on port growth is discussed.As one of the main means to expand the hinterland and supply of goods,the inland port is developing rapidly.Hence,in the end,this thesis studies the impact of inland port construction on port growth.The study of these problems is necessary for the rational adjustment of a port’s positioning,as well as for the identification of its future development orientation.The main research contents and conclusions of this thesis are as follows:1.The hinterland of the main container ports in the YRD is delineated.Through the use of data from Chinese customs from 2009 to 2017,we applied the membership degree method and the Huff model to demarcate the hinterlands of major container ports in the YRD.Then,the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of port hinterland were studied.The results show noticeable overlapping of port hinterlands,thereby confirming that the YRD container ports have shared hinterlands.The competition situation among the ports in the YRD has changed from the initial multi-port competes with Shanghai Port to competition among all ports.The hinterlands of Shanghai port reveal a segmental distribution,and the distribution of the different types of hinterlands is discontinuous.The hinterland of Shanghai Port weakened at its core and expanded in the periphery area after the financial crisis.The hinterland coverage of NingboZhoushan port are mainly concentrated around Zhejiang and some cities in Jiangxi,Fujian,and Anhui.The evolution of hinterland showed the expansion characteristics of core and edge area.The hinterland of Lianyungang,Nanjing,and Suzhou ports surround mainly their port cities and radiating outward to several neighbouring cities.2.The shift-share increase of the YRD port group from 2009 to 2017 is studied.Further,the decomposition model of port growth is constructed based on hinterland perspective.It is found that the shift-share increase of the container port system is mainly caused by the shift-share increase among the port groups,and the competition pattern of China’s container port system has changed from the former intra-port competition dominant to inter-port competition dominant.The YRD port group shows the dominant position in the national port system.The rapid growth of container generation capacity in the port hinterland of the YRD is the fundamental reason why the YRD port group is in the dominant position.LMDI was used to decompose the driving factors of foreign trade containers in YRD ports.The results show that the growth effect and spatial structure effect promote the increase of foreign trade containers in the ports of the YRD.The competitiveness effect leads to the decline in the volume of foreign trade containers in Shanghai Port and Lianyungang Port,and the increase in the volume of foreign trade containers in Ningbo-zhoushan Port,Suzhou Port and Nanjing Port.3.Taking Ningbo-zhoushan Port as an example,the construction of the inland port as a policy variable,the container trade data of China customs and the city’s social and economic data from 2009 to 2017 are adopted to study the impact of the construction of the inland port on the volume of foreign trade containers between the city and Ningbo-zhoushan Port.It is found that the construction of land ports has significantly driven the growth of the traffic flows between the city and port by using the difference in difference model.On average,the volume of foreign trade containers has increased by 31.5%.From the third year after the completion of the land port,the estimated coefficient becomes significant and positive,indicating the construction of a inland port has a time-delay effect on promoting the city-port container volume.The inland ports within 200 km and 200-400 km from the ports have no significant promoting effect,while the land port with a distance of more than 400 km has a significant promoting effect.The construction of inland ports can increase the container flow between the city and the port through two ways,that is,the foreign trade growth and port substitution effects.Based on the spatial perspective,the spatial spillover effect of inland ports was studied by using the spatial DID model.The results show that the construction of inland port will not only promote the growth of foreign trade container volume between the local city and Ningbo Zhoushan Port,but also increase the volume of foreign trade container volume between neighboring city and Ningbo Zhoushan Port,and there is a spatial spillover effect.