Jihong Chen

The information exchange between the forwarder and vessel operating common carrier (VOCC) directly leads to a shortage or surplus of capacity and influences operational efficiency. Meanwhile, the development of information technology has inspired VOCCs to establish online booking platforms, which has changed the traditional booking behavior of shippers. Thus, this paper investigates the equilibriums of platform encroachment and information sharing with two symmetric VOCCs and a forwarder. Using a game-theoretic model, it can be characterized as Stackelberg-Nash game with Bertrand competition to determine whether to encroach existing freight forwarding market and share information or not. We observe whether freight forwarder shared information is affected by the encroachment strategy of VOCCs and the market demand state. Further, the encroachment strategy can prompt freight forwarder to share information with VOCCs if the magnitude of high demand is lower. In addition, for VOCCs, the best chance of establishing online platforms is when the magnitude of high demand is relatively low, not when the demand state has increased.

This paper explores the decision-making and coordination mechanism of pricing and collection rate in a closed-loop supply chain with capacity constraint in recycling channels, which consists of one manufacturer and one retailer. On the basis of game theory, the equilibriums of decisions and profits in the centralized and decentralized scenarios are obtained and compared. Through the performance analysis of a different scenario, a higher saving production cost and lower competition intensity trigger the members to engage in remanufacturing. Furthermore, we try to propose a two-part tariff contract through bargaining to coordinate supply chain and achieve a Pareto improvement. The results show that when the capacity constraints in recycling channels exceed a threshold, the decisions and profit will change. Additionally, for closed-loop supply chain, the selling price is more susceptible to the influence of capacity constraint in recycling channel than the members’ profit.

With the economic globalization continuing to advance, coastal port cities have enjoyed increasingly prominent status and roles as the link between the sea and the land and an important window of foreign trade and exchanges. However, port cities, while embracing rapid development, have also produced a significant impact on natural resources and the ecological environment. Ecological environment protection has become a must-consider factor for sustainable development of port cities. To secure coordinated and sustainable development of ports and cities, this paper utilizes the system dynamics theory and approaches the subject from driver analysis. In the traditional port-city collaboration system model, indicators of ecological perspectives such as land resources and environmental protection are introduced to build a dynamic model for the spatial evolution system of port-city coupling system based on ecological protection, and the dynamic mechanism of port-city spatial relation evolution is analyzed in depth with a case study of Dongdu Port Area of Xiamen Port. The model’s simulation results show that from an ecological perspective, the spatial distance between the port and the city is critical to their sustainable and coordinated development. Only after the port-city spatial distance increases moderately can the development efficiency of the port-city system welcomes a relatively significant increase. Managing the port-city distance well has a significant driving effect on capacity enhancement of the port and economic development of the city. This provides a theoretical reference for further studies on port-city coordinated and sustainable development and provides constructive suggestions for the government to make relevant decisions.

As bridges connecting seaports and their hinterland, dry ports serve to expand the hinterland and increase cargo sources of seaports, rendering efficient international logistics circulation in hinterland areas possible. The roles of dry ports have attracted increasing attention from various ocean shipping countries. Seaports and dry ports possess complementary functions and increasingly close interactions. The paper builds an assessment indicator system on correlations between seaports and dry ports and a two-stage grey relational analysis (GRA) method through collating dry port-related literature to facilitate quantitative studies on the correlations between seaports and dry ports, namely, using two quantitative indicators of Deng’s correlation and absolute correlation to assess and determine the correlations in the development of seaports and dry ports. The paper then carries out case studies on Xiamen Port and its six dry ports to verify the effectiveness of the method and model in the paper. The study results show that Xiamen Port has very high region-varying correlations with its hinterland dry ports. Dry port development not only depends on their shipment volume indicators, but also significantly correlated with their economic indicators, and the hinterland economic indicators become key factors driving the fast development of a seaport. The analyzing method in the paper is conducive for government departments and relevant stakeholders to formulate superior policies and provide theoretical bases for the development of correlations between seaports and their dry ports.

Emission governance of air pollutants from ships is a common challenge for the world's shipping industry. Under the framework of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Europe, North America, and other developed regions and countries have established strict ship Emission Control Areas (ECAs). With some of the largest ports in the world, China suffers severe air pollution from ships, posing a threat to the air quality and public health of the coastal cities. To strengthen the control and supervision over air pollutants, such as ship-emitted sulfur oxides (SO_x) in coastal areas, China issued a Sulfur Emission Control Area (SECA) policy for ships in January 2016. However, the new SECA policy lags far behind IMO's existing ECA policies, and continues to face many challenges during implementation. This paper outlines the main framework of China's ship SECA policy, analyzes the legal governance basis, discusses major potential challenges for implementing the policy, and puts forward suggestions for future governance. This research aims to promote the effectiveness of China's sulfur emission-reducing SECA policy by putting forth novel ideas for policymakers and stakeholders.

Global warming has significantly reduced summer ice coverage in the Arctic region, providing long-awaited opportunities for the shipping industry to open new routes through a region known for its harsh navigational conditions. If a shortcut between Asia and Europe via the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is adopted, significant energy saving and pollution reduction are possible compared with conventional southern routes. However, opinions in literature differ regarding this shortcut’s economic viability. We present an analysis from the perspective of COSCO, China’s largest container sea freight operator. We perform a cost–benefit analysis under several scenarios considering the following current realities: (1) declining oil prices not seen for decades, even lower than the lowest prices assumed in previous studies; (2) declining Russian NSR tariff as an effort to attract shipping traffic; (3) possible emission control areas along a northern route may require much cleaner energy and thus impact costs not studied in previous models; and (4) the capital cost difference between a hired and a self-owned vessel. Classical case studies of shipping routes between Shanghai and Rotterdam are adopted for comparison. We explain how different factors impact the shipping costs and to what extent can the NSR be economically viable. Occasional usage of NSR (e.g., one time transit) is unlikely to be more profitable given the higher unit transportation cost, but the route could be economically competitive in terms of the total profits earned for continuous usage. A more aggressive scenario which requires ships on the NSR to switch to much cleaner fuel would erode this route’s competitiveness, but extra environmental benefits should be taken into consideration if future carbon emission trading schemes include the shipping industry.

In this paper, the dual hesitant fuzzy rough set (DHFRS) is studied from the viewpoint of assessment deviations. Firstly, according to the relationship between intuitionistic fuzzy set and vague set, the DHFRS is transferred into a fuzzy set, where the membership of any given element to it has multi-grouped values. By the idea of bootstrap sampling, a group of four sets are generated to describe the membership degree on DHFRS, where the elements of the aforementioned sets are all considered as assessment values. Secondly, the generated sets are dealt with by assessment deviation theories, and specifically, two variables are proposed to describe the systematic and random deviations of the sets. Thirdly, the true-value of the membership degree of any elements to the set is estimated by a deviation-based dual hesitant fuzzy rough weighted aggregating operator. Fourthly, a dual hesitant fuzzy rough pattern recognition approach based on assessment deviation theories is proposed. Finally, an urban traffic modes recognition example is given to illustrate the validity of the proposed theories on DHFRSs.

In the liner shipping market carriers share container slots to offer better service and realize economies of scale. This paper studies slot co-allocation planning for a joint fleet in a round trip for a shipping alliance in the liner shipping industry. In particular, a conceptual model is developed based on joint fleet and slot co-allocation management. The factors affecting slot co-allocation planning are explored in detail. A large-scale integer programming model is formulated to guide carriers in an alliance in pursuing an optimal slot co-allocation strategy. In contrast to the existing research, this approach leads to a more accurate representation of the situation for cooperative services in the liner shipping market. Extensive numerical experiments based on a true Asia-Europe cooperative route of COSCO and HANJIN show that the proposed model can be efficiently solved by LINGO11.0 for the case study. The computational results suggest that the mechanism and model can be used to benefit carriers in making better decisions in shipping cooperation services.