A major goal for port authorities, operators, and investors is to achieve efficient operations and effective environmental protection. This is because the environmental performance of a container port is important for its competitiveness and sustainable development. However, the container ports along the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) have caused numerous problems with the rapid development, among which the most significant problem is environmental pollution. In this paper, we aim to measure and compare the environmental performance and operational efficiency of ten major container ports along the MSR, including the ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kelang, Laem Chabang, Colombo, Dubai, Barcelona, Antwerp, and Hamburg. We develop an improved, inseparable data envelopment analysis (DEA) model with slack-based measures (SBMs) to evaluate and compare the environmental performance and operational efficiency, and we incorporate the desirable output of container throughput as well as the undesirable output of CO₂ emission. Our results show that. Overall. these container ports perform better in terms of operational efficiency than environmental performance. We also provide insights for management and policy makers for container ports with different levels of operational efficiency and environmental performance.

We develop a game model to analyze the tacit collusion between regional ports under three different scenarios. In the first scenario, there is simultaneous pricing game between regional ports; this intends to depict pricing strategy adopted independently. In the second, we consider two competing ports that make sequential pricing decisions. Thirdly, an infinitely repeated game model is then formulated for regional ports to test the stability of Nash equilibrium. Our main finding is that there is a certain degree of tacit collusion of pricing strategy between regional ports in the competitive environment; in particular, the tacit collusion of pricing strategy will gradually stabilize with the increasing number regional ports games. A case study of Yangtze River Economic Belt is provided to illustrate the results.

As an important component of new western land-sea corridor, the construction of Pinglu Canal will effectively alleviated waiting time and congestion costs and enhance the reliability and resilience of the regional maritime transport network in the post-pandemic era in particular. From the perspective of competition and cooperation game, this paper investigates typical transportation routes from the port of Jakarta in Indonesia to the port of Nanning in China from the key factors of the changes in freight volume and the evolution of profits and subsidies, considering local government subsidies, environmental costs, marine emissions and other critical factors. The results demonstrated that in the centralized strategies adopted by two transport route operators, as the volume of goods transported through Pinglu Canal increased, so the corresponding profits increased. The increase in subsidies also contributed to generating the volume of freight through Pinglu Canal, but the social welfare under the decentralized strategy adopted by both transport route operators was more effective than that of the centralized strategy.

With the promotion of mode cooperation and integration in international trade transport in the context of intense globalization, vertical integration between container ports and liners, two key players in container transport chains, often leads to horizontal collusion between container ports. By establishing an infinitely repeated game with discrete time periods, this paper explores the interrelation, the possibility and the stability of the coexistence between vertical integration and horizontal collusion. Our primary finding is that vertical integration and horizontal collusion have mutually reinforcing effects. In particular, the former results in an increase in shippers’ surplus at the expense of the latter.

According to the dual-track system implemented on port tariffs in past years, the vast majority of state-owned container terminals adopt the standard rates specified by China’s Ministry of Transport, while the container terminals of joint ventures are permitted to charge their stevedoring rate with a 20% float ratio up and down. The latest port reform was to improve the port tariff formation mechanism by speeding up the implementation of detailed list and public notice on port pricing. This paper analyses the optimization of the pricing strategies between container terminals under deregulation. Based on a two-stage noncooperative game theoretical model, the Nash equilibria of pricing strategy profiles between container terminals of one port under deregulation are derived. Although the price-matching strategy may be employed by the foreign-owned container terminal, which usually resulting in a total social welfare loss, the price-matching pricing strategy not being adopted by the state-owned container terminal will avert tacit collusion. Numerical simulation is applied to the case of Shenzhen Port.

Based on customer choice behavior and port service substitution effect, constructing co-opetition model among port cluster, finding the equilibrium strategy profile for port cluster coordination through evolutionary game theory and analyzing the port selection of the best service and charges as well as maximum profit. With numerical example to verify the validity of the model, when the strategy profile moves from perfectly competition to perfectly co-operation, the optimal charge will increase while the best service improvement or not depends on the natural container basement, unit variable cost and service cost coefficient; due to long-term equilibrium state is perfectly competition strategy profile, there is a need for appropriate institutional arrangement to reduce the saddle-point position in order to achieve maximize profit for the overall port cluster.