Incorporating subjective elements into liners' seaport choice assessments

This paper provides a broader understanding of seaport choice. There has been considerable expansion in international maritime container based trade that is requiring substantial investment in seaport capacity. The growth in demand for port services has, however, neither been even over time nor across ports making the defining of appropriate investment policies challenging. Most studies of port choice, a major factor in the demand for any individual port, focus on relatively easily quantified measures, such as financial costs, to the neglect of less tangible factors that also influence decision-making. Here we examine the role played by subjective factors, namely the preference rates in port choice, by focusing on the optimal port of call of shipping lines serving South-east Asian and European ports drawing upon trade-offs between generalized costs and preference rates. An analytic hierarchy process is employed to ascertain the subjective element. The findings confirm that subjectivity does matter in influencing port choice, and thus failure to incorporate it in policy-making can involve leaving out an important element in the management of port investment and financing.