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The growth of China’s economy during the 1990s has both shaped and reflected changes in the span and function of the country’s shipping connections both within Asia and with the rest of the world. Although sea-land developments within China have been studied, less attention has been paid to the wider global implications stemming from the transformation of the country’s maritime geography during a decade of further market reforms and greater integration into the world economy. Consequently, there is a need to comprehend how China’s state-owned shipping industry has been reorganized during the 1990s to meet the new requirements, with special reference to the country’s liner shipping connections between and within Asia respectively. More purposely, these topics are addressed by examining changes in the organization, approach and set of connections of the state-owned China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (Cosco) and its post-1993 offshoot COSCO Container Lines Company Ltd (Coscon). This review provides a springboard for a detailed analysis of shifts in both extra- and intra-Asian shipping patterns between 1990 and 2000 and consideration of their strategic implications. Finally, short-sea shipping is defined and the phenomenon’s operational strengths and weaknesses discussed.

The purpose of this study is to quantify port efficiency assessment indicators to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on Chinese One Belt One Road (OBOR) ports.

This study utilized a grey prediction model GM(1,1) to forecast five relevant indicators for each of the 17 OBOR ports both with and without COVID-19 background conditions. Additionally, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency assessment approach was used to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on port efficiency.

The results indicate that cargo and container throughput growth rates during the COVID-19 pandemic are reduced by 1.7 and 2.1%, respectively. There was also a noticeable reduction in technological efficiency (TE) as well as pure technological efficiency (PTE), while scale efficiency (SE) remained largely unaffected. Furthermore, the dynamic efficiency MI was mainly negatively impacted by changes in overall efficiency change (EFFCH), where pure efficiency change (PECH) less than one contributed significantly towards overall regression of port efficiencies during this period.

This paper is unique in its use of a combination of the grey prediction model and DEA efficiency assessment to quantify changes in important indicators during pandemic periods. This approach not only provides a quantitative understanding of the impact on port-level efficiency through numerical quantification but also offers readers an intuitive understanding.

This article aims to explore the concept of chain value of the public port system in Ecuador from the perspective of importing/exporting companies, analyzing how perceived value in the use of port services affects customer satisfaction and the intermediate links of the influence of trust and commitment on customer loyalty.

Relying on a survey of 634 Ecuadorian companies with experience in international trade as port users and a theoretical framework well-established in the literature on consumer behavior, the empirical study found evidence of a positive and significant relationship with the knowledge of chain effects.

The findings confirm the chain effect and reveal ways to maintain an ongoing satisfactory, trust and committed relationship with users, thereby ultimately gaining and maintaining their loyalty. The conclusions suggest how this postulate can help to close the gap referred to the effective management of port services, and point out that port managers should be concerned with a continuous in-depth understanding of the perceived value and its chain effects.

The authors add evidence of the use of the postulate of the chain of effects on these dimensions, whose applicability is very well established, tested and consensual for the doctrine in industrial marketing. In contrast, it is scarcely present in the port relationship with its users.

Natural and cultural tourism are important motivators for international tourism. Spain has impressive tourist attractions that are outstanding on the natural and cultural tourism dimensions. The purpose of this paper is to identify traits of the most attractive destinations in Spain and to understand the relative importance of natural, cultural, and dual (natural and cultural) attractions to target consumers.

The authors compare the level of tourism in the 17 major regions of Spain and identify the key natural, cultural, and dual attractions using a two-step cluster analysis to ascertain the relative importance of the three types of attractions.

The findings of the cluster analysis suggest that natural attractions had the highest importance, followed by dual attractions, with cultural attractions having the lowest importance in affecting the level of tourism in a region. The study identified four categories of regions resulting from “high vs low” total number of attractions by “high vs low” levels of tourism (operationalized via the number of tourist-nights). The regions with high levels of tourism were either located in the bodies of water (a group of islands) or on ocean/sea(s) surrounding Spain. The study suggests placing greater emphasis on promoting cultural attractions in Spain.

The findings suggest that there is a need to put more emphasis on promoting the cultural attractions in Spain. Spain is a diverse country with huge potential for tourism from people all over the world, due to its diverse geography and rich history.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyzes 17 regions of Spain in relation to their tourism characteristics, identifying attractions that are not sufficiently leveraged, and suggesting strategies for identifying opportunities for the tourism industry in Spain.

The increase of containership sizes driven by the need to create greater economies of scale seems to be an endless process. Vessels of more than 21,000 TEU are presently on order. The purpose of this paper is to question whether a positive effect still remains at present mega ship sizes and, even if this was the case, whether such presumably small effect would be outweighed by costly operational impacts for the lines and the ports out of the huge ship sizes.

The effect of increasing ship sizes on the three major cost items in container shipping have been investigated by extrapolating founded regression curves, applying respective physical laws and referring lumpsum crewing cost (as the major part of the vessel’s running costs) to various ship sizes.

In this paper, it is shown that further effects of lower slot costs lessen while ships get larger. Hence, a further increase in ship sizes would not significantly reduce transport costs anymore. In contrast, the necessary efforts to prepare the ports for ships of ever-increasing size are growing over proportionally with every additional metre of draught and/or beam. It is shown that an ongoing increase of containership sizes, e.g. in the Europe-Far East trade, does not bring any further benefit, neither for the ports and their terminals nor even for the lines itself and not even for the shippers! It is an amazing mechanism that all stakeholders act rationally on their own, but the overall effect for all of them (including the public) has turned into negative.

The results may pave the way for a closer cooperation among ports, e.g. within the Hamburg-Le Havre range. Ports and terminals may see the opportunity to escape the spiral of ongoing efforts for deepening and widening the fairways and installing ever-bigger gantry cranes by agreeing on a joint policy with regard to maximum ship size.

The different performance tests were conducted on diesel engine compression ignition (CI) mode and CRDi engine.

The CI engine was suitably modified to CRDi engine with Toroidal re-entrant combustion chamber (TRCC) and was run in dual-fuel (DF) mode. Hydrogen (H₂) was supplied at different flow rates during the suction stroke, and 0.22 Kg/h of hydrogen fuel flow rate (HFFR) was found to be optimum. Diesel and biodiesel were used as pilot fuels. The CRDi engine with DF mode was run at various injection pressures, and 900 bar was found to be optimum injection pressure (IP) with 10o before top dead center (bTDC) as fuel injection timing (IT).

These operating engine conditions increased formation of oxides of nitrogen (NOx), which were reduced by exhaust gas recycle (EGR). With EGR of 15%, CRDi engine resulted in 12.6% lower brake thermal efficiency (BTE), 5.5% lower hydrocarbon (HC), 7.7% lower carbon monoxide (CO), 26% lower NOx at 80% load as compared to the unmodified diesel engine (CI mode).

The current research is an effort to study and evaluate the performance of CRDi engine in DF mode with diesel-H₂ and BCPO-H₂ fuel combinations with TRCC.

This paper defines the emerging intermodal issues, identifies alternative solutions and develops strategies to achieve them. It reviews intermodal logistics policies in the EU, NAFTA and Asia, focusing on the United States and Japan in NAFTA and Asia respectively, because they have been the prominent motors of international trade in their regions. From an Asian standpoint, it is a pity that it is not yet possible to report on a common intermodal strategy.

Critical infrastructure (CI) plays an essential role in reading, reacting and responding while dealing with natural disasters. This study address food supply chain resilience by proposing an FSC resilience model that explains the food product and transport flow via production, processing, distribution and retailing in circumstances of (CI) collapses post a natural disaster.

A combination of qualitative methods was conducted to obtain a comprehensive overview of the food and beverage sector in Puerto Rico. The full dataset comprised of seven focus groups for a total of 52 participants and 12 in-depth interviews.

FSC resilience is seen in this study through the managerial actions taken by members of the Chain: innovating, transforming, adapting, and flexibilising business models and operations.

This study is the first to address FSC resilience from the perspective of net food importer economy in the context of natural disasters and prolonged Critical infrastructure (CI) breakdown, and the first one in proposing an FSC resilience model that explains the food product and transport flow via production, processing, distribution and retailing in circumstances of CI collapses post a natural disaster.

Transport logistics systems in companies with additional public service roles are complex and could benefit from new approaches to performance management. Existing approaches tend to be fragmented; thus, the purpose of this paper is to integrate balanced performance measures, a dynamics model, and the problem-solving method into a new model.

An integrated framework is developed by reviewing literature and synthesising attributes of performance measurement systems, system dynamics and problem-solving methods. The framework is then applied to a multiple-role company’s sea transportation system. The study uses statistical methods to identify performance indicators, management interviews with document study to develop a dynamics model, and simulation methods to formulate an improvement plan.

The performance measurement design stage allowed for the identification of balanced, aligned performance indicators, while the system dynamics model illuminated the impact of the system components’ interrelationships on performance output. The problem-solving method allowed for analysis of system performance, identification of constraints and formulation of a performance improvement plan.

This framework can help transport logistics system stakeholders in multiple-role companies avoid silo thinking, misaligned performance objectives, local optima and short-term solutions.

This study contributes to the existing body of research by introducing a novel framework integrating performance measurement, system dynamics and the problem-solving method. It also addresses a theoretical gap by showing how interconnecting components of sea transportation systems affect transport logistics performance.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between citizen participation and the level of trust in government’s decisions and policies; as well as examining the impact of disclosure of information on the level of citizens’ engagement with governments’ projects. In addition, testing the real motives behind Egyptian citizens’ participation in financing national projects. The study is applied to the “New Suez Canal,” which was finished in only one year opposing the three years implementation period suggested by some studies.

The researcher depended on secondary and primary data as well in working on this paper. She used secondary data gathered from scholars and from domestic and international institutions. Then, she conducted a field study and collected data through distributing 384 Likert Scale questionnaires containing 34 self-administered among respondents to test the following: 1. Citizens perceptions regarding the level of trust in government’s decisions and policies. 2. The impact of citizens’ trust on their willingness to participate in governments’ projects. 3. Is ‘public service motivation’ (PSM) behind citizens’ willingness of participating in national projects. 4. Is the ‘high expected profit of Suez Canal Investment Certificates’ behind citizens participation in national projects.

H1 and H2 have been accepted as trust, transparency and citizen participation proved to be important pillars of building a participatory government. Moreover, citizens’ participation in national projects encouraged national and international enterprises to invest in the canal provision. H3 and H4 are accepted and the statistical study revealed dual contradicting results regarding the motive of citizens’ financial participation in the New Suez Canal project. The justification for the contradiction is that right after the 2011 up-rise, Egyptian citizens were overwhelmed with patriot emotions and feelings pushing them to participate in national projects. At the same time this patriot drive was moderated by the “performance-based rewards and citizens” self-interests’ pushed by the Egyptian government (offering a high-interest rate for Suez Canal Certificates at that time). Citizens might be motivated to participate in national projects triggered by many factors: public service drive – patriotism or self-interest.

The study needs further deeper investigation and empirical pieces of evidence to answer the following questions: would different participatory actions result differently in other circumstances? Do individuals’ levels of PSM vary over time? Besides, the researcher needs to find ways to test PSM against various motives such as self-interest, which needs to be confirmed empirically.

The author came up with important recommendations for central government and decision-makers in Egypt and is based upon the study’s statistical results. The most important recommendations were: central government and decision-makers should frame a policy designed to promote citizens’ participation in decision-making drawing on the guidelines for civil participation in political decision-making. Decision-makers in the central government should work local and regional authorities to update and improve local and regional regulations concerning the participation of citizens in local public life and promote a culture of democratic participation shared by communities and local authorities. Performance-based rewards (high-interest rate) are moderating the citizens’ public service motivation (PSM – patriot sense) and citizens may be motivated by different factors such as public service drive – patriotism or self-interest.

The study is tackling an important issue, which is civil participation in political decision-making. It is also discussing promoting cultural awareness regarding the importance of democratic participation shared by communities and local authorities. The study came up with certain findings proving Egyptian civil society’s willingness in participating with the government in national projects; believing in its socio-economic benefits.

Finally, the study is of value, as it could be considered a pilot study representing the outcomes of citizen participation in national projects; in addition, it can be considered as a road map to policymakers. Moreover, the findings provide a set of recommendations and policies for governments and decision-makers to undertake tangible actions to accelerate citizen participation in further projects and decisions and be able to establish a democratic system in developing countries.