Evaluation and strategy development of port-industry-city integration: A China's case

In large economies of high-volume international trade, such as China, the concept of regional port integration requires the establishment of provincial-level port companies and the consolidation of major local ports. While port reform at the provincial/regional level has seen considerable success, the current state-of-the-art studies on port integration mainly focus on two-dimensional analysis (e.g., port-city and port-industry), which reveals a remaining research gap in the evaluation of the port-Industry-City (PIC) integration from a new three-dimensional perspective. This study aims to develop a new method enabling the assessment of the impact of provincial reform at the PIC level. The method can deliver a new comprehensive evaluation index system and a new coupling coordination degree model (CCDM) to facilitate PIC integration. Moreover, a critical analysis is conducted on the main trends, primary obstacles, and impact of port reform models at the PIC level. Real big data describing prefecture-level cities is collected and used to conduct a case study of coastal ports across different provinces in China. The results reveal an overall upward trend of the comprehensive development index, which is especially evident after the port reforms. Furthermore, significant strategic developments are proposed in the implementation of regional port reform. Except for Zhenjiang, southern and central cities perform better than those in northern regions. Consequently, this study makes new contributions to enabling the quantification of the impact of the reform on PIC integration and laying the groundwork for decision-makers seeking to determine appropriate port management models. • Examine the impact of provincial port reforms. • Develop a new comprehensive evaluation index system for PIC integration. • Introduce a coupling coordination degree model to evaluate the causal impacts at the PIC level. • Conduct an empirical analysis across several provinces to assess the effectiveness of regional port reforms.