Port Intelligent Transformation and Regional Economic Sustainability: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta, China

The intelligent transformation of ports has become a critical pathway for advancing sustainable regional development in the context of rapid globalization and digitalization. While existing studies primarily focus on evaluating port intelligence, limited attention has been given to its role in fostering regional economic sustainability. To address this gap, this study examines the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region as a representative case to explore the mechanisms through which port intelligent upgrading influences regional economic systems. An integrated analytical framework is developed in which the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to construct a composite index of port intelligence, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is employed to measure regional economic development. Furthermore, a Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) model is applied to capture the dynamic interactions between these two systems. The results indicate that port intelligence has increased significantly across the sampled ports, with the Port of Shanghai and the Port of Ningbo–Zhoushan exhibiting particularly notable growth, rising by 28% and 44%, respectively, over the period of 2011–2021. The PVAR results further reveal a sustained upward trend in regional economic development, suggesting a positive and persistent association between port intelligence and regional economic performance. These findings provide both theoretical and empirical support for understanding the role of port intelligent transformation in promoting regional economic sustainability and offer policy-relevant insights for fostering coordinated development between port systems and regional economies.