Transhipment port competitiveness assessment: the importance of port location

Abstract Over the last decades, competition between ports to attract shipping lines to their facilities has intensified, and has become particularly fierce in the case of transhipment ports located in the Mediterranean Sea. This area has a large number of hubs and mixed ports competing to increase their transhipment share or maintain their hub status. Given this fierce competition between ports, measuring port competitiveness has become a key issue. However, while the identification of the determinants of competitiveness has drawn considerable attention from researchers, few studies undertake a global assessment of these factors. Therefore, in an attempt to fill this gap, the present research aims to develop a composite index to study port competitiveness. To do so, we use the Benefit-of-the-Doubt and the Common Set of Weights methods in Data Envelopment Analysis to obtain a common weighting scheme for the evaluation of Mediterranean ports for transhipment cargo. Results show the importance of geographical location to become a hub; consequently, ports close to the main navigation route achieve a higher index score. However, their performance in shipping connectivity and port productivity can also help improve their competitiveness.