| Summary |
As the supply of sand and gravel which were dredged in north Taiwan decreased, it was necessary to balance the supply and demand of sand and gravel in north Taiwan by the sand and gravel from Eastern Taiwan or other countries. However, theses freights were mainly shipped to Port of Taipei or Keelung, and then they would be loaded on the heavy trucks and delivered to the shippers. Furthermore, the policies implemented by the port authority will influence the port selection behavior of the sand and gravel shippers directly. Therefore, before making a relevant policy, the essential step is that we need a good knowledge of the opinions on port users and observe their actual behavior on port choice.
The issue which transfers the whole sand and gravel freight in Port of Keelung to Port of Taipei has attracted the attention of stakeholders related to sand and gravel recently. However, does the issue fit the need or port selection behavior of shippers who choose Port of Keelung? In this study, we will formulate a binary logit model for the port choice of gravel and sand shippers in the north Taiwan. Hence, we run the visualization analysis and estimate the results of the model by the revealed preferences data about the gravel and sand freight. After all, we will execute an elasticity analysis. Through the results, we want to identify the key factors affecting the port selection of shippers.
The result shows that inland transit time and maritime distance mainly affect the probability of port selection of shippers negatively and significantly. It means that when the inland transit time (or maritime distance) of the port increases, it will reduce the probability of choosing the port from the shipper. Also, the result of cross elasticity reveals that the most important factor is loading rate if we want to change the port behavior of shippers. By the results of the visualization analysis and the model, we can know that shippers who choose Port of Keelung prefer the port with lower loading rate, faster inland transit time and shorter maritime distance. |
