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This present study uses political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE) analysis and the strategic management theory to examine how external factors, namely the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the industrial revolution (IR) 4.0 technologies, the fuel price crisis and Sultanate of Oman Logistics Strategy (SOLS) 2040, affect the performance of container terminals in Oman.

A hybrid decision-making method that combined the analytical hierarchy process technique and Bayesian network model was used to achieve the objective of the present study.

The COVID-19 pandemic (54.60%) most significantly affected the performance of container terminals in Oman, followed by IR 4.0 technologies (19.66%), SOLS (17.00%) and fuel price crisis (8.74%). Container terminals in Oman were also found to perform “moderately,” considering the uncertainty of external factors.

This study enriches existing literature by using PESTLE analysis to assess the impact of the external business environment on firm performance in the context of the maritime industry as well as highlights how challenging external environmental factors affect the performance of container terminals in Oman.

This study contributes to developing novel study models and determining the performance level of container terminals in Oman considering integrated uncertainties and external factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, IR 4.0 technologies, the SOLS 2040 and the fuel price crisis.

The importance of container transportation has increased due to the globalization of the world economy. The purpose of this research is at proposing a framework to enhance the container terminals performance through evaluating efficiency and competitiveness.

The researchers used data envelopment analysis to assess the efficiency and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process to measure competitiveness of container terminals. The proposed framework captures key performance indicators to evaluate the container terminals' performance and identify areas that need improvement. It was applied to the Egyptian container terminals from the period of 2015–2019 as an empirical study.

Findings highlights the highest utilization of resources of Alexandria port while more attention should be given to the level of service provided. On the other hand, El-Sokhna should focus on more utilization of the available resources. The performance evaluation showed that the rest of Egyptian terminal ports should improve both competitiveness and efficiency at different levels based on their performance ranking.

The developed framework can be used as an evaluation tool to evaluate the performance of container terminals in other countries, and can be utilized as a performance benchmark tool to compare the performance of container terminals of competing ports.

The developed framework can help policymakers to assess efficiency and competitiveness based on both quantitative data and experts' judgement in order to help in formulating government logistics strategy.

The research provides a comprehensive framework to measure and evaluate competitiveness and efficiency of container terminals based on both quantitative data and experts' judgement.

The awarding of terminals to private operators is considered a prime task of landlord port authorities. Yet, terminal concessions in seaports have only recently gained interest in academic circles. The awarding process poses a complex set of managerial challenges to port authorities, one of the key issues being the determination of the duration of the concession.

Despite the importance of the duration of terminal concessions in seaports, the issue has not received much attention in academic circles. Factors impacting on the duration of contracts, leases or concessions have, however, been studied extensively in other research areas, such as agriculture, coal contracts, franchising and natural gas. This paper uses insights from these academic studies to obtain a better understanding of the impact of concession duration on the stakeholders involved and relates them to empirical evidence on concession length in European seaports. The paper then proposes a classification scheme for the exogenous determination of concession duration, based on techniques developed for Public-Private-Partnerships in large infrastructure projects. In the last section the paper discusses the importance of concession durations to various stakeholders in seaports and illustrates these principles using a case study.

This paper presents a generic simulation model to determine the equipment mix (quay, yard and intra-terminal transfer) for a Container Terminal Logistics Operations System (CTLOS). The simulation model for the CTLOS, a typical type of discrete event dynamic system (DEDS), consists of three sub-models: ship queue, loading-unloading operations and yard-gate operations. The simulation model is empirically applied to phase 1 of the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai. This study considers different scenarios in terms of container throughput levels, equipment utilization rates, and operational bottlenecks, and presents a sensitivity analysis to evaluate and choose reasonable equipment ratio ranges under different operational conditions.

This study explores the main factors considered when shippers and container shipping lines select their import/export and transshipment ports. In the present study, 38 container port selection indices were chosen from the previous research and field interviews. The scores of the 38 items were collected via survey to the three major maritime/port market players: shippers, shipping lines, and container terminal operators. In order to analyze the different priorities imposed on the port selection factors by the three market players, the ANOVA method has been employed. The empirical test shows the different perceptions about port selection attributes among service suppliers and demanders. In addition, the 38 items have been categorized into seven key factors through an exploratory factor analysis. The ANOVA technique was employed again to analyze the perspective differences for the port selection factors among the market players. The results show that there are significant differences among the players assessing the importance of the three port choice factors: liners and terminal operators give more weight to ‘hinterland and terminal basic conditions’ than shippers; terminal operators do not take ‘line operation’ as seriously as carriers and shippers; the factor of ‘terminal operation’ is more significantly considered by liners and terminal operators than by shippers.

When port authorities or terminal operators set the free time or increase storage density, the decision is often made without a clear understanding of their effects on throughput and rehandling productivity. This is partly because practical methods that deal specifically with the effect of dwell time on throughput and productivity are limited in the literature; hence the motivation for this work. This paper introduces simple methods to evaluate the effect of container dwell time and storage policies on import throughput, storage density, and rehandling productivity. The analysis considers two import storage strategies 1) non-mixed - no stacking of new import containers on top of old ones, and 2) mixed - stacking of new import containers on top of old ones. The results highlight the effect dwell time has on throughput and rehandling productivity. For the non-mixed storage policy, the increasing container dwell time lowers throughput and average stack height - resulting in an increase in rehandling productivity. On the other hand, for the mixed storage policy, the increasing container dwell time raises throughput and average stack height - resulting in a decrease in rehandling productivity. Using the presented methods, port authorities and terminal operators are able to assess and quantify the benefits of their decisions regarding container free time and subsequently make an informed decision.

This paper examines the port of Mombasa’s attempted implementation of computer-based terminal operating systems (TOS); the challenges faced and the outcomes. In addition to enhancing its operations efficiency, a key motivation for the technology was to facilitate better integration and connectivity to the Belt and Road as a key gateway along the key route. It utilised a qualitative single-case methodology, involving a combination of semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations and content analysis of relevant policy documents and reports provided by the port. The paper finds that the attempt to adopt and implement TOS at the port mostly failed as a result of a complex combination of technological, organisational and environmental factors. Most importantly, the wider business environment was ill equipped with the necessary information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to support effective implementation. There was also a general lack of appropriately skilled workers to support and drive the same.

This study assessed the contribution of containerization to the development of Western Ports, Lagos Nigeria. The aim was to assess the influence of containerization on some indices of port development such as port infrastructure development, ship turnaround time, cargo dwell time and congestion. Questionnaire was used to gather information on the contribution of containerization to change in maritime trade in the country, the influence of containerization on terminal expansion, congestion, level of investment in container port infrastructure as well as the influence of such investment on container dwell time and ship turnaround time (TAT) and the competitiveness of container terminal within Nigeria port systems and with other developed container ports of the world. Secondary data used included statistics of reports of operations of Western Ports between 2000 and 2010 as reported by NPA, as well as reports of some selected ports derived from Containerization International Year Book, which were used in this study for the sake of global reference. Summary tables and ANOVA for the analysis of the data. Results revealed a significant contribution of containerization to maritime trade relative to the ports’ annual records but with no significant influence on ship turnaround time, cargo dwell time congestion which are determinants of port productivity and competitiveness. The study concluded that Western Ports have still not reaped gains of containerization and lacking in competitiveness when compared with other developed ports of the world.

Demand for express parcel delivery has been greatly increasing in South Korea due to the growth of B2C e-commerce activities. It is imperative that parcel carriers have good insights into the performance of their distribution networks with different levels of demand and plan ahead for the adaptations in order to be able to meet future changes in demand. This paper proposes a framework to evaluate the likelihood of parcels arriving on-time to their destinations (local service reliability) with a strong focus being placed on their spatial distribution. The resulting maps of local service reliability allow us to identify specific locales that would suffer the most from a capacity overflow in the networking system, thus pointing to areas that need immediate attention. Furthermore, this paper attempts to identify potential factors which could affect the spatial variation of local service reliability.

Several e-payment technologies have diffused in Nigeria yet debit card usage on POS devices have not shown consumer confidence in its usage thereby affecting the cashless policy drive of the nation. The study considered an affective commitment of users as moderating their behaviours. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how user behaviour is moderated by an affective commitment on point of sale terminal.

Following the purpose of the study, the research design is a survey. The questionnaire was adapted from earlier studies and tested for reliability and validity using Cronbach’s alpha and content validity. Andrew F. Hayes process was used to analyse the moderation effect.

The finding revealed that affective commitment significantly moderates users’ ease of use of the device, their perceived usefulness of the device and their social image on their intentions to use the device.

The findings implied that there is a need for the development of policies and strategies which should be directed towards the users of the device. Equally, the general conclusions on collective e-payment channels in a society should be discarded given that each e-payment channel can have different factors influencing it than the others. This is where customer-focused advertising and awareness campaign becomes very important.

This paper declares that the research work is not submitted anywhere for publication or for review. It was conducted by the authors who have given their consent for it to be submitted to Rajagiri management journal