Lorena Garcia-Alonso

University of Oviedo | UNIOVI · Department of Applied Economics

International trade would not be the possible without maritime transport, and the latter would be unfeasible without the existence of seaports. Therefore, port activity has been crucial in terms of trade flows worldwide, but its relevance is even greater when it comes to the accessibility local regions to overseas markets and, hence, the competitiv...

The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model for both port and cruise destinations composed by site and situation-related factors as the main drivers with a direct influence on the performance of the cruise destination. A moderator variable was also included on the model, due to the different characteristics that cruise ports at disti...

The availability of public databases provides a great amount of data for research, but their use can involve a lack of detailed information about the decision-makers. This fact prevents the analysis of systematic variations in their preferences. In addition, the influence of the explanatory variables included in the utility function of discrete cho...

In the present work, the determinants of port choice regarding container cargoes from specific hinterland regions are analyzed, based on an empirical study of Spain. Previous work has been extended by including novel explanatory variables for the market shares of ports in hinterland locations. Discrete choice theory is the methodological approach u...

Maritime transport is a sector particularly affected by climatic conditions. Once a ship is in the port, ship manoeuvres and port operations can be hindered by the weather conditions related to wind, wave height, rain, fog, etc. Additionally, shipping can also be hindered by weather conditions which leading to demand variability. Therefore, the wor...

The relationship between the regional economy and the infrastructure endowment has long been discussed in the literature. In this context, it can be said that ports play an important role for regions, as they affect their competitiveness, while the regional economic activity has an effect on port traffic. Both circumstances influence the inland dis...

While immediate port hinterlands remain relatively captive, distant hinterlands are fiercely contested. Where road is the dominant mode, transport costs are a function of distance which is therefore often the key determinant of port choice. Where distance is sufficiently long to enable rail to compete, other factors become important, such as termin...

Policy makers around the world are promoting diffrent initiatives to face the threat of global warming. This work focuses on the transport sector. In particular, it focuses on those initiatives that promote the shift of traff from road to sea by supporting short sea shipping services in order to reduce air emissions. The aim is to contribute to the...

Many papers analyse the role of transport infrastructure in the economic development and competitiveness of regions. However, the literature has paid little attention to the impact of the changing patterns of international trade on the use of the infrastructure. The hypothesis of this work is that the evolution of the geographical pattern of countr...

The aim of this study is to analyse how the degree of use of port facilities influences the port choice process. In order to achieve that goal, a multinomial logit model was firstly proposed and then applied to a case study. In this particular case, the relationship between the container traffic and the availability of cranes was considered for the...

The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology to delimit the scope of the hinterland of ports as accurately and simply as possible. To achieve this goal, the Huff model was adapted. In order to verify the validity of the proposal, it was applied to the Spanish case. As repulsion and attraction factors, both key aspects in the Spatial Intera...

According to the theoretical postulates of the New Economic Geography, the ability of ports to attract traffic from the economic activity centres should be influenced by their geographical location regarding them. The aim of this paper is to test that hypothesis through the Spanish case study by introducing the concept of market potential in the an...

The particular location of port infrastructure holds characteristics that determine the activity of the port, both with respect to traffic and with respect to implementing competitive strategies; and the efficiency and efficacy of infrastructure depend on the governance systems that regulate the ports. Likewise, the development of port activity ech...

There is a growing interest concerning the inland side of port traffic. According to this trend, this paper analyse the spatial development of the ports' hinterland through the simultaneous use of two indices. The aim is to assess two relevant and complementary questions in the port hinterland configuration: its relative geographical extent and its...

Transport costs are useful explanatory variables in port choice research. Nevertheless, the availability of such information usually poses a problem. Thus, the formulation of an alternative approach, to be used as a proxy of these variables, would be desirable. The objective of this study is to improve the analysis of container port choice using lo...

The more intensive use of containers for channelling the flows of international trade has led to the ports become nodes of the main supply chains. As a result, there is a strong competition among port alternatives to attract routes to their facilities in order to gain the greater share of maritime traffic. The need to identify the variables respons...

The aim of this paper is to analyse and compare the ability of the main Spanish containers ports to penetrate into their inland territory along the last decade. To achieve this goal we firstly identify the inland origin of the container cargo by considering the location of the Spanish companies generating those flows in the peninsula. Then we deter...

In the Maritime-Port Economic literature we have seen growing interest in the analysis of the process of inland distribution of maritime traffic. To extend the capacity of ports can be crucial for their competitiveness and increase their chances of success in the process of port choice. In this paper, we propose to analyze how the maritime traffic...

The success of the multimodal transport articulated through maritime routes is highly dependent on the correct selection of the maritime stretch. For this reason during the last years the European Union has made a great effort in identifying the most interesting maritime corridors for the establishment of the Sea Motorways. Despite the political...

Earlier research by the authors showed that transport costs, port specific dummy variables and proxies for quality of service aspects have a statistically significant impact on port choice. The objective of this paper is to improve the earlier models through the use of a nested logit model and further by including new variables. The results show th...

For the economic and financial evaluation of port investment projects, it is important to know the demand function of a port's services. The objective of this study is to establish such a demand choice function for the Spanish container port services. The function is derived from the coefficients of a port choice model, for which a multinomial logi...

This article investigates the major attributes in determining port attractiveness from the perspective of service providers. This was accomplished by conducting a questionnaire survey of ports located in Asian and Latin American countries. In comparing the present survey results with those of earlier surveys of service users (that is, shipping line...

This paper proposes a methodology based on non-parametric statistical techniques to analyse whether the ordinal preferences in the port selection process are stable, and also the intensity of those preferences. We apply this methodology to the Spanish case from the landside perspective in order to answer the following question: Has the increase in...

The studies investigating the port selection process had one thing in common: they analyse the declared preferences of the port agents. However, it is difficult to identify the relevant variables in this process because of the heterogeneity of this group. In this article, we suggest to study the port choice through revealed port selection instead o...

The aim of this paper is to discuss the circumstances in which the process of competition between ports takes place in Spain − circumstances arising from the way the port system is currently set up and from the regulations governing it. The importance of this matter lies both in the fact that intensified competition between ports is the way to se...

Las mejoras introducidas en el sector del transporte han propiciado que una misma mercancía pueda ser transportada eficientemente desde diferentes puertos y, consecuentemente, han venido acompañadas de un incremento de la inversión en infraestructura. Sin embargo, la selección portuaria llevada a cabo desde las provincias españolas para canalizar s...

The growth in intermodal transport has led to an increase in competition between ports. Other factors, such as the globalisation of the economy, European Union interest in integrating the port system into the Transeuropean Transport Network and the reform of the Spanish port system, have encouraged the Spanish Port Authorities to develop competitiv...

En una negociación de carácter internacional los jugadores (los gobiernos) toman parte en dos juegos simultáneamente (Putnam, 1988): el doméstico o nacional, donde esos negociadores están sometidos a ataques severos y a divisio-nes de opinión por parte de los distintos grupos de interés existentes en la sociedad (Iklé, 1964), y el internacional, en...

Con este trabajo se pretende avanzar en el conocimiento de las claves de la competencia interportuaria mediante el descubrimiento de las variables que determinan el reparto del tráfico marítimo entre las diferentes instalaciones que componen el sistema portuario español. Para ello se propone analizar la configuración de las áreas de influencia de c...