Advances in port studies: the contribution of 40 years Maritime Policy & Management

Port economics, management and policy have progressively emerged as a distinctive research field, and a core part of maritime economics. This paper provides an analysis of all the 267 port studies published in Maritime Policy & Management (MPM) since its inception in 1973. This paper provides a content analysis for seven interrelated research theme categories including main research topics and methods, authorship distribution and citation counts. It is demonstrated that MPM played, and continues to play, a key role in publishing research on seaports. The published research increasingly applies established analytical frameworks to ports. The paper concludes with a discussion on current challenges for port-related research.     

Environmental innovation and the role of stakeholder collaboration in West Coast port gateways

The paper explores the role of stakeholder collaboration in the adoption of innovations as part of the environmental and sustainability agenda of port gateways. We do this through a comparative assessment of the port of Vancouver, British Columbia, and the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. An inductive research approach is used to identify and assess the initiation and implementation process behind exemplary innovations. Innovation includes new technologies and processes for handling and moving cargo, mechanisms for planning and policy making, as well as financing, implementing, upgrading, managing and operating infrastructure systems. A relatively new arena for competition on the basis of innovation concerns environmental performance. The conceptual framework and empirical evidence suggest that while there may be intense demand for and supply of innovation in port gateways, the complex dynamics of the logistics chain are such that successful innovation requires conscious involvement and collaboration of stakeholders.     

Determinants of motor vehicle crash fatalities using Bayesian model selection methods

Motor vehicle crashes continue to result in large numbers of fatalities each year and represent the leading cause of death for young persons. In 2006, for example, there were over 42,700 fatalities associated with these crashes. Understanding the causes of these crashes and methods to reduce them continues to be of great interest to economists, public health officials, and policy makers. We present in this paper statistical models using a rich set of panel data covering the period 1980 to 2007 by state and the District of Columbia. Our choice of variables is based on an extensive literature highlighting the importance of policy, safety, demographic, and economic determinants of fatality rates.     

Attitudes toward Participation in Cooperative Coastal Management: Four European Case Studies

Findings are reported of the VALCOAST project that had as one of its research objectives to ascertain: (a) stakeholder willingness to participate and cooperate in coastal management (CM), given local and national CM practices; and (b) stakeholder assessment of the "accessibility" and "friendliness" of current CM processes. The project involved case studies and stakeholder interviews in Belgium, Greece, Spain, and the UK. Major findings include: (1) most stakeholders are willing to cooperate in three out of the four case areas, but not to the same extent; (2) the participating "officials" in the case studies are expecting the stakeholders to be less willing to cooperate than the latter indicate; (3) stakeholders in all case studies do not expect to be heard by those responsible for CM, find it difficult to learn about the relevant institutional arrangements, and consider the communication of the objectives and anticipated impacts of CM policies to be inadequate. It is concluded that the strong evidence of stakeholders' potential willingness to cooperate in local initiatives is very encouraging for a devolved, regional approach to European Union coastal management policies, provided that this potential is capitalized upon in such policy processes.     

A model for work activity schedules with synchronization for multiple-worker households

This paper presents a hybrid discrete choice-duration model for work activity scheduling with interactions between workers in a multiple-worker household. The model operates in discrete space with a fine level of temporal resolution. The key innovative feature of the model is the introduction of intra-household interactions through worker schedule synchronization mechanisms. The model was estimated based on a large Household Travel Survey from the San Francisco Bay Area. The estimation results confirmed that individual work schedules for workers in a multiple-worker household are subject to strong synchronization and should be modelled jointly rather than independently. In particular, workers in the same household tend to align their schedules and create time window overlaps for joint activities before and after work. Relative strength of the synchronization mechanisms proved to be a function of the person characteristics and household composition.     

Situation analysis forecasting: the case of European maritime clusters

Within the literature concerned with aspects of competitiveness, innovation and strategic management of industrial clusters, the body regarding forecasting of strategic management is still nascent. This work aspires to render a contribution within the domain of strategic management forecasting, through the indicative case of European maritime clusters. For this end, a two-tier model is formulated. A quantitative strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) methodology that derives from the fusion of a quondam situation analysis and crosstabs’ theory is generated. This leads to the utilization of the crosstab’s conditional probabilities as transition probabilities; the latter are called to compile the transition matrix of a Markov chain. Through this methodology, and the successive Markov chain’s transition matrices, strategic forecasts are extracted for a devised European maritime cluster case. This work relinquishes a novel application with respect to strategic management forecasting, that provides a dichotomy of practical interpretations and scenarios for quantitative situation analysis. Thus, it may enable effective real-time decision-making for strategic management and/or policy drafting. The situation analysis forecasting model may find applicability in a plethora of practical and theoretical cases, wherein forecasting may be desirable. It may as well pertain to an intrinsic methodology for situation analysis forecasting of maritime clusters.     

Estimating the robustness of questionnaire results: lessons from a mixed-mode survey of expectations for tele-working and road-based business travel

The robustness of questionnaire results to various forms of bias are explored in the context of a dual-mode (web and hardcopy) survey of employers’ anticipations of levels of employee commuting and business travel activity under a range of future ICT scenarios. The questionnaire incorporated several innovative features which, together with the dual-mode format, allowed an unusually wide range of analyses. For example: the robustness of respondents’ opinions was tested by examining the effect of incorporating alternative versions of a briefing text, one being very positive and one very negative, about the role of ICT; instrument bias was identified via detailed comparison of the results from the two versions of the questionnaire; and the impact of exogenous factors which are often ignored or taken as constant was assessed via special supplementary questions. Analysis showed that the robustness of opinions and expectations varied and was influenced by respondent characteristics, and that results from the two versions of the questionnaire differed significantly. It is concluded that opinions and expectations are less robust, and questionnaire results are more subject to bias and myopic interpretation, than is generally recognised and that web-based surveys seem particularly vulnerable to sampling bias. Methods are suggested for measuring robustness, for reducing bias and for validating and contextualising results. The use of contrasting briefing texts is recommended as a means of establishing the robustness of opinions and expectations while supplementary questions are recommended for validating and contextualising SP and SE exercises.

A study of vibration and vibration control of ship structures

This paper examines the vibration characteristics and vibration control of complex ship structures. It is shown that input mobilities of a ship structure at engine supports, due to out-of-plane force or bending moment excitations, are governed by the flexural stiffness of the engine supports. The frequency averaged input mobilities of the ship structure, due to such excitations, can be represented by those of the corresponding infinite beam. The torsional moment input mobility at the engine support can be estimated from the torsional response of the engine bed section under direct excitation. It is found that the inclusion of ship hull and deck plates in the ship structure model has little effect on the frequency-averaged response of the ship structure. This study also shows that vibration propagation in complex ship structures at low frequencies can be attenuated by imposing irregularities to the ring frame locations in ships. Vibration responses of ship structures due to machinery excitations at higher frequencies can be controlled by structural modifications of the local supporting structures such as engine beds in ships.     

Problems faced by the shipping industry in raising capital in the securities markets

This papers examines the reasons for the shipping industry's general failure to exploit the enormous capital raising potential offered by the world's major security markets. The basic reason put forward is one of joint ignorance and lack a of communication. On the one hand shipping perceives the market as being unsympathetic to its requierments. On the other hand, the Stock market assess it as a minor activity and this is combined with a presumption of industrial instability. An analysis of recent initial public offering of equaity options in shipping highlights the inadequacy of companies who have ventured that way. In particular it is pointed out that shipping companies who embark on such a course must not forget that equaity is, at one end the same time, the cheapest and the most expensive money which they can raise. There is a further underlying problem for the industry, which is that market capital raising neccessiates the loss of personal control.     

The impact of a port on its local economy: the case of Plymouth

It has been suggested in two potentially influential documents that the development of ports could be an important tool of regional economic growth in areas such as South West England. This proposition is analysed in this article by detailed examination of the case of Plymouth, one of the areas in the region for which port development has been mooted. It is concluded that the Plymouth evidence suggests that it is easy to exaggerate the existing and potential role of ports in the regional development process. Ports are not big employers of labour and are no longer the inter-related industrial complexes that they once were. In most cases, therefore, they serve industry in areas distant from their own.