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This paper aims to study the implication of the stochastic gross-profit-per-day objective on the ship profitability and the ship capacity and speed.

The paper has used the mathematical model and the solution methodology given by El Noshokaty, 2013, 2014, 2017a, 2017b, and SOS, 2019.

The paper finds that if the ship owner follows the rate concept and the cargo demand forecast, he can improve the profitability of his company and be able to select the proper capacities and speeds for the ships used.

The findings are not only useful for the shipping or other cargo transport companies but also for businesses like gas reservoir development, car assembly lines in the industry, cooperative farming and crop harvesting in agriculture, port cargo handling in trade and road paving in construction.

The contribution of this paper lies in notifying the ship owners of the possible profitability improvement and the consequences of building ships of larger capacities and slower speeds.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and clarify “irrationality” problem through the maritime industry practices and leading incentives behind common investors.

This paper includes a review of broader business and economics literature; review of shipping business practices and detection of institutional pathways and misleading mechanisms behind the irrational preferences; investigation of data (for some arguments); and introduction of a theoretical approach.

There are several industry practices and norms well established and followed by decision makers, which may cause and initiate illogical and irrational (long-run) preferences. Short-termism is an erroneous habit of common shipping investors, which is embedded and forced through traditional financial math (i.e. discounted cash flow), financial system (e.g. initial public offerings with high-frequency transactions, interest rate governance and asset valuation mechanism) or flawed contracting tradition (i.e. commission bias).

Both shipping business and financial institutions need to redesign their working mechanisms, evaluation systems, risk detection and assessment procedures. As discussed in Section 4.7, commission-based (float) services must be converted to regular flat rate payments with long-term contracts to protect investors from rational choices of intermediaries in the short-run which encourages investor’s irrationality. Having a long-term service contract will also improve sustainability of intermediaries and lower their business risk (win-win).

The impact of this paper is two-fold. First, it raises critical questions about professional decay and drawbacks of some traditional instruments in the shipping business. For the first time, this paper emphasises on various challenges which deteriorate credibility of the industry and causes ill-defined investments. Some arguments have extreme priority for strengthening the foundations of the industry. Second, this paper establishes a new stream of scholarly research highlighting weaknesses of conventional economic approach and demand for outsourcing other schools of economics (e.g. institutional and behavioural) into the shipping business.

Short-sea shipping (SSS) plays an important role in regional transportation networks by supporting regional trade and improving inter-modality. In particular, countries in north-east Asia, such as China, South Korea and Japan have been served well by local SSS services. While SSS markets in Northeast Asia (NEA) have been developed by bilateral routes with sub-markets, the market structure of each sub-markets varies depending on concentration and competition levels as well as government intervention. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the market structure of SSS markets in the Northeast Asia.

Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and concentration ratio are adopted to measure the market concentration from 2013 to 2017 for SSS markets in NEA. Additionally, the balance between supply and demand is investigated by measuring the capacity utilisation factor (CUF) based on slot capacity.

The market structure in the NEA SSS markets is influenced by firms’ behaviour under different levels of governmental intervention. Shipping firms in a market with more governmental intervention in market entry tend to focus on balancing supply and demand rather than increasing market share, whereas firms in a market with less intervention (and more competition) tend to increase their market share by pursuing efficient capacity management.

The period of data set is limited to 2013–2017. Furthermore, prices or revenue for specific routes are not available.

This paper sheds light on the market structure and behaviour of players in SSS market. In addition, the work has value to measure capacity utilisation based on slot capacity.

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being and mental health of the seafarers who had to overstay on ships after their contracts expired, identifies topics that affect their mental distress and recommends measures to overcome these.

Four research questions about the impacts on the seafarers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic were raised. A literature review and a questionnaire survey were conducted to find answers. Ship officers were asked to assess and fill in the questionnaires for the stranded seafarers onboard in order to collect sufficient samples rapidly for this study.

Despite the guidelines provided by the shipping companies being adequate to protect the seafarers from COVID-19, their mental distress levels have been worsened under the pandemic. The crew change crisis causes anxiety and negatively impacts on their working performance; however, the repatriation expectation of the stranded seafarers is of the highest concern. Three topics were identified as having impacts on the mental health of the stranded seafarers: crew change crisis, low vaccination rate and the lack of key worker recognition. While international stakeholders are advocating for support in these issues, the shipping companies and the seafarers need to do their parts to exacerbate the mental distress, and to survive and thrive beyond the pandemic.

The findings of this study will help the shipping companies to navigate the challenges and the seafarers to overcome issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper deals with network configurations in liner shipping and inland transportation from a carrier's perspective. The cost efficiency of different possible network configurations in the foreland-hinterland continuum is discussed based on a cost model and on a qualitative analysis. It is demonstrated that the tendency towards cargo concentration in a limited number of ports has led to the redesign of collection and distribution networks in the hinterland. Further cargo bundling in the foreland-hinterland continuum towards even fewer ports and inland centres is only interesting from a cost perspective if considerable economies of scale and density can be realised in the associated hinterland networks. The more cost efficient the network becomes, the less convenient that network could be for the shippers ' needs in terms of frequency and flex ibility. As such, the future configuration of liner shipping networks and inland transport networks will largely depend on the balance of power between carriers and shippers.

This study aims to analyze information on vessel traffic between the two Koreas with a probability distribution for each route/vessel type. The study will then conduct an estimate for maritime transport patterns of inter-Korean trade in the future. To analyze the flow of inter-Korean coastal shipping, this study conducted visualization analysis of shipping status between North and South Korea by year, ship type, and port using navigation data of three years from Port Logistics Information System (Port-MIS) sources during 2006 to 2008, which saw the most active exchanges between the two governments. Also, this study analyzes shipping status between the two governments as a probability distribution for each port and provides the prospects for future maritime transport for inter-Korean trade by means of Bayesian Networks and simulation. The results of the analysis are as follows: i) when North-South routes are reopened, the import volume for sand from North Korea will be increased; ii) investment in the modernization of ports in North Korea is required so that shipping companies can generate profit through economies of scale; iii) the number of the operating vessels including container ships between the two governments is expected to increase like when the tensions and conflict on the Korean Peninsula was release, especially between Busan port in South Korea and Nampo port in North Korea; and iv) among container ships, transshipment containers imported and exported through Busan Port will be shipped to North Korea by feeder transportation.

The paper aims to identify the contributors to freight rate fluctuations in the Suezmax tanker market; this study selected the refinery output, crude oil price, one-year charter rate and fleet development as the main influencing factors for the market analysis.

The paper used the vector error correction model to evaluate the degree of impact of each influencing factor on Suezmax tanker freight rates, as well as the interplay between these factors.

The conclusion and results were tested using the 20-year data from 1999 to 2019, and the methodology and theory of this paper were proved to be effective. Results of this study provide effective reference for scholars to find the law of fluctuations in Suezmax tanker freight rates.

This paper provides a decision-making support tool for tanker operators to cope with fluctuation risks in the tanker shipping market.

While previous studies focused mainly on East Asia to Europe or United States trade routes, in recent years, trade among South-East Asian countries has increased notably. The price of transporting a container is not fixed and can fluctuate heavily over the course of a week. Besides, extant literature only identified seasonality patterns in the container freight market, but did not explore route-varying seasonality patterns. Hence, this study analyses container freight seasonality patterns of the six South-East Asian routes of the South-East Asian Freight Index (SEAFI) and the index itself and forecasts them.

Data of the composite SEAFI and six routes are collected from the Shanghai Shipping Exchange (SSE) including 167 weekly observations from 2016 to 2019. The SEAFI and individual route data reflect spot rates from the Shanghai Port to South-East Asia base ports. The authors analyse seasonality patterns using polar plots. For forecasting, the study utilize two univariate models, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and seasonal autoregressive neural network (SNNAR). For both models, the authors compare forecasting results of original level and log-transformed data.

This study finds that the seasonality patterns of the six South-East Asian container trade routes are identical in an overall but exhibits unique characteristics. ARIMA models perform better than SNNAR models for one-week ahead test-sample forecasting. The SNNAR models offer better performance for 4-week ahead forecasting for two selected routes only.

Major industry players such as shipping lines, shippers, ship-owners and others should take into account the route-level seasonality patterns in their decision-making. Forecast analysts can consider using the original level data without log transformation in their analysis. The authors suggest using ARIMA models in one-step and four-step ahead forecasting for majority of the routes. The SNNAR models are recommended for multi-step forecasting for Shanghai to Vietnam and Shanghai to Thailand routes only.

This study analyses a new shipping index, that is, the SEAFI and its underlying six routes. The authors analyze the seasonality pattern of container freight rate data using polar plot and perform forecasting using ARIMA and SNNAR models. Moreover, the authors experiment forecasting performance of log-transformed and non-transformed series.

The purpose of this study is to determine the distraction factors based on their contributions in affecting seafarers’ physical and psychological well-being.

A systematic average mean value technique incorporated with quantitative data collection is applied to determine the contributions of the involved factors in establishing the distraction problems among seafarers.

Element of “Food and nutrition” is recorded as the highest contributing factor to Malaysian seafarers, for deck and engine department, respectively, in establishing the distraction-related problem among five other factors involved.

This paper is only providing a scope of knowledge regarding the contribution of potential distraction factors existing on board the offshore ships. However, the potential distraction factors and their contributions, respectively, are very dynamic and may vary, depending on the situation of a particular area and who are being involved.

The result assists the shipping industry in recognizing the actual causes of the occurrences of marine casualties and incidents related to human factors.

The benefits are addressed to seafarers’ community where their well-being and work performances could be enhanced, thus reducing the occurrences of marine casualties and incidents. Local community at the shores also will be less threatened by marine pollution caused by the accidents of ships at sea.

The result provides a scope of knowledge regarding distraction-related factors in shipboard operation and also the introduction to a systematic assessment approach to determine and rank the parameters by using the systematic average mean value technique which is also a straightforward method and can be applied in any other circumstances.

This study aims to examine variables and factors in vocational awareness and attitudes that affect the vocational aspiration of seafaring course students who are potential future seafaring employees.

A literature review was conducted to identify factors that prompt students in seafaring courses to pursue seafaring careers, followed by a design of preliminary questionnaire questions to survey students’ perception on the conditions of seafaring careers (i.e. vocational awareness) and their intention to pursue a seafaring career (i.e., vocational aspiration). A total of 744 seafaring course students in four Taiwanese universities completed a questionnaire developed according to the previous studies. A structured equation modelling was conducted in this research including model validity, goodness of fit, model correction and mediation effects.

With a model consisting of four factors for vocational awareness, three factors for overall attitudes and vocational aspiration as a dependent variable, the results showed that factors of vocational awareness and students’ overall attitudes were significantly correlated, and the factors of overall attitudes exhibit strong mediation effects on vocational aspiration from vocational awareness. The results confirmed that the factors are important determinants for the vocational aspiration of students.

The findings of this study provide a comprehensive approach to understand students’ seafaring aspiration for the universities, governments and shipping companies. Seafaring policies and management are discussed from the research findings.